The JOC said the first stage of the military operation code-named “the Will of Victory” began on Sunday to clean the areas of the western province of Anbar and the central and northern regions of Salahuddin and Nineveh, the Arabic-language al-Forat News reported.

Adil Abdul-Mahdi, the Iraqi prime minister and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, issued a message on Sunday to the security forces as the operation began.

This large-scale operation will continue for several days, with the participation of the Iraqi army and the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) and aerial support from the Iraqi Air Force.

Daesh militants made swift advances in much of northern and western Iraq over the summer of 2014, after capturing large swaths of northern Syria.

However, a combination of concentrated attacks by the Iraqi military and the volunteer forces, who rushed to take arms after top Iraqi cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa calling for fight against the militants, blunted the edge of Daesh offensive and later forced them to withdraw from the territories they had occupied.

In November 2017, the self-proclaimed caliphate of Daesh collapsed after Syrian and Iraqi armed forces and their allies managed to recapture the terror group’s last strongholds in the two Arab countries.

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