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Added on the 17/10/2016 20:15:01 - Copyright : France 24 EN
This little toddler named Bilal Tagirov was just two years old when his father kidnapped him and forced him to travel to Syria in October 2015. Bilal's father Hassan Tagirov left the Chechen Republic in order to fight for the self-proclaimed Islamic State. His mother Zalikha Ashakhanova only found out that her son was located in Mosul by chance when she saw a video of him online on July 15, 2017. The toddler was found by Chechen security forces in Mosul and finally reunited with Zalikha in Grozny on Thursday, returning to her waiting arms.
Women living in Haji Ali, a group of villages numbering about 40,000 people in northern Iraq about 40 miles south of Mosul, have taken up arms to protect the area from Islamic State militants. IS-controlled villages are only about a mile away, so women have learned how to use weapons and have started guarding their families' houses at night, in order to help their men, which rotate in and out of the frontline. Villagers fear that IS could sneak across the Tigris river and into the village under the cover of night, and are complaining that locals don't have enough weapons to defend themselves.
Iraqi rapid response forces south of Mosul say they've pushed most Islamic State fighters out of a Sunni town where the fighters once had strong support, while other troops liberate a nearby Christian town. Mana Rabiee reports.
The fight moves outside of Mosul, as Islamic State's media arm releases video purporting to show its militants targeting Kurdish Peshmerga forces near Sinjar, Iraq. Gavino Garay reports.
An Islamic State flag topples in the Iraqi town of Hamman Al-Alil as Iraqi forces advance towards Mosul. Paul Chapman reports.
An Islamic State flag topples in the Iraqi town of Hamman Al-Alil as Iraqi forces advance towards Mosul.
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