Raw Footage: Iraqi Forces Celebrate After ‘Defeating’ ISIS in Small Iraq Town

U.S. airstrikes helped to break a two-month ISIS siege

Iraq Crisis: U.S. Airstrikes Help Break Islamic State Siege on Amirli (The Wall Street Journal)

BAGHDAD—U.S. airstrikes helped break a two-month siege by Sunni militants on a Shiite town on Sunday, in apparent coordination with ground attacks by Shiite militias, local civilian fighters and Kurdish troops.

The attacks around Amirli, about 100 miles north of Baghdad, helped to avert what had been one of the country's biggest looming humanitarian crises. Residents of the town of 17,000, most of them Shiite Turkmen, faced famine, thirst and diseases such as diarrhea from drinking dirty river water.

Fighters from Amirli thanked the militias and Kurdish regional forces known as Peshmerga for helping them break the siege by Islamic State insurgents, speaking on Iraqi state television. An Iraqi military spokesman, Gen. Qassim Atta, declared the town liberated.

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