Anbar

More than 90,000 people have fled their homes in Iraq's western province of Anbar where Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants have been gaining ground over the past week, the United Nations said on April 19.

ISIL militants have encroached on the provincial capital Ramadi, displacing thousands of families. 

Iraqi ground forces secured the perimeter around the country?s biggest oil refinery on April 18 and entered the vast complex amid heavy clashes with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants, said a senior Iraqi military official.
                   

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) insurgents took control on Feb. 12 of large parts of the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi, threatening an air base where U.S. Marines are training Iraqi troops, officials said.
   

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called Jan. 5 for a "tribal revolution" against Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), in a sign of the importance Baghdad places on tribal resistance against the jihadists.

Violence in Iraq in 2014 killed at least 12,282 civilians, making it the deadliest year since the sectarian bloodshed of 2006-07, the United Nations said in a statement.

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) launched a major attack Nov. 21 on the Iraqi city of Ramadi, capital of the troubled western province of Anbar, security officials said.
      
ISIL fighters pounded the city centre with mortar rounds, while clashes broke out all around Ramadi, one of the last urban areas partly under government control in Anbar.
      

Iraqi officials said Nov. 9 that an airstrike wounded the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Pentagon officials said they had no immediate information on such a strike or al-Baghdadi being wounded.

Iraq’s Defense and Interior Ministries issued statements saying al-Baghdadi had been wounded, without elaborating.

Congress members returning to Capitol Hill next week will face a debate over President Barack Obama’s new $5.6 billion plan to broadly expand the U.S. mission in Iraq and send up to 1,500 more American troops to the war-torn nation.

Militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) killed at least 36 more people in its execution campaign targeting a tribe that fought against it, an Iraqi tribal leader and an officer said Nov. 3.

Iraq stepped up security amid fears of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) launching major attacks as thousands of Shiites flocked Monday to the shrine city of Karbala for an annual pilgrimage.