article_snippet.sent: Iraqi Army soldiers and the Iran-backed volunteer Shiite militias allied with the Iraqi regime have had great success in pushing ISIS out of key towns and villages recently.
article_snippet.sent: Just last week the Iraqi security forces liberated the city of Tikrit - the birthplace of Saddam Hussein and a strategically important area from which Iraqi Army will look to recapture Mosul and eventually force ISIS out of the country altogether.
article_snippet.sent: ISISonslaught plunged Iraq into Iraq worst crisis since the 2011 U.S. troop withdrawal from the country.
article_snippet.sent: Militants have also targeted Iraq's indigenous religious minorities, including Christians and followers of the ancient Yazidi faith, forcing tens of thousands from tens of thousands homes.
article_snippet.sent: Since then, ISIS has carved out a self-styled caliphate in the large area straddling the Iraqi-Syrian border that ISIS now controls.
article_snippet.sent: In early August, U.S. launched airstrikes on the militant group in Iraq, in an effort to help Iraqi forces fight back against the growing threat by the IS militants, who still hold the northern Iraqi province of Ninevah and most of the western province of Anbar, in addition to small areas north of Baghdad in Iraqi forces hands, along with a large swath of land in neighboring Syria.
article_snippet.sent: insurgents last August when they overpowered Kurdish forces in .
article_snippet.sent: the Sinjar area and proceeded to purge northwestern Iraq Yazidi population, .