Joint Operations Command

ISIL claimed responsibility early on Jan. 22 for Baghdad's suicide attack, via the group's Amaq news agency on its Telegram channel.

Two men blew themselves up in a crowded Baghdad market on Jan. 21, killing at least 32 people in Iraq's first big suicide bombing for three years, authorities said, describing it as a possible sign of the reactivation of the ISIL.

Locals recounted grizzly details of a US-led coalition attack that reportedly killed at least 8 Iraqis Saturday, calling on American forces to leave the country. The Coalition said the incident is under investigation.

Iraqi forces have retaken almost all of Tal Afar, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's (ISIL) stronghold in the country's northwest, the Iraqi military said on Aug. 27.

The Iraqi military announced on Thursday that special forces had recaptured the iconic Mosul mosque where jihadist chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made his only known public appearance, AFP reported.

A top special forces commander told AFP that while the Nuri mosque - which was blown up by the Islamic State group last week -- was close to being recaptured, it had not been retaken yet.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) now controls less than seven percent of Iraq, down from the 40 percent it held nearly three years ago, a military spokesman said April 11.

Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led air strikes and other support are now battling ISIL inside second city Mosul, after retaking much of the other territory the jihadists had seized.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) shot down an Iraqi helicopter operating over Mosul on April 6, and killed two pilots, as security forces announced they recaptured another neighborhood in their nearly six-month-old offensive against the jihadist stronghold.

Iraq is investigating air strikes in west Mosul that reportedly killed large numbers of civilians in recent days, a military spokesman said on March 26.

Iraqi forces have retaken more than a third of west Mosul from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a commander said, as Baghdad's troops fought March 12 to advance deeper into the city. Iraqi forces launched the operation to recapture west Mosul,  the most populated urban area still under ISIL control, on Feb. 19, retaking a series of areas as they advanced up from the south.

Iraqi forces battling the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in west Mosul reached the city's southernmost bridge on Feb. 27, a key step in efforts to defeat the jihadists in their stronghold, a spokesman said, as thousands of civilians fled the fighting.

Iraqi Kurdish forces have seized the town of Bashiqa near Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as part of the operation to liberate Mosul from jihadists, an official said Nov. 8.

Bashiqa was now under the "complete control" of Kurdish peshmerga forces, Jabbar Yawar, the secretary-general of the Kurdish regional ministry responsible for the fighters, told AFP.