Mosul offensive

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for a suicide attack with an explosive-laden fuel tanker on an Iraqi police checkpoint south of Baghdad, killing at least 60 people, as Iraqi forces make preparations to launch an operation against ISIL to take Mosul back. 

The risk of Iraq's largest dam collapsing and unleashing a huge wave onto Mosul is affecting plans to retake the city from jihadists, an adviser to the prime minister's office said.
 

Kurdish peshmerga forces need a short-term emergency fund of $300 million a month from the U.S. to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a Kurdish Iraqi official said on Feb. 8.      

The Iraqi army is deploying thousands of soldiers to a northern base in preparation for operations to retake the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)'s hub of Mosul, officials said on Feb. 8.

Iraq announced on Feb. 2 that it has awarded Italian firm Trevi a contract to repair and maintain the country's largest dam, which is in danger of catastrophic collapse.

Iraq needs $1.56 billion this year to finance its emergency response to the humanitarian crisis caused by the war against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), according to a government report released on Jan. 31. 

The U.S. military has a contingency plan to deal with a potential collapse of Mosul dam in northern Iraq which would be catastrophic, the top U.S. general in Iraq said on Jan. 28. 

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Friday that U.S. will use “boots on the ground” to take back the cities Mosul and Raqqa and fight ISIS militants.

“We need to destroy them in those two places, and I’d like to get on with that as soon as possible,” Mr. Carter, speaking from Davos, Switzerland, said in an interview on CNBC.

Militants launched a gun and bomb assault in the centre of the Indonesian capital on Jan. 14, killing at least six people, in an attack that followed a threat by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters to put the country in their "spotlight", police said.

Turkey should w?thdraw any military forces in Iraq that are "not authorized by the Iraqi government," U.S. President Barack Obama has told Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, according to the White House.