Iraqi families return to Tikrit weeks after city's liberation from ISIL
Displaced Iraqi families have begun returning to their homes in Tikrit two and a half months after the army, backed by volunteer forces, drove the ISIL Takfiri terrorists out of the northern city.
Some 200 families went back to Tikrit, the capital of Salahuddin Province, on Monday, The Associated Press quoted Salahuddin governor Raed al-Jabouri as saying.
According to Jabouri, another 1,000 families are expected to return by Thursday.
Iraq’s state television aired footage of security personnel safeguarding buses full of Tikrit residents, a number of them waving Iraqi flags.
Located some 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad, Tikrit was seized by the ISIL terrorists last summer along with Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul and other areas in the Arab country’s Sunni heartland.
The city has a strategic position as it sits on the road to Mosul.
On March 31, 2015, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared the liberation of Tikrit from the hands of the ISIL extremists following weeks of intense fighting.
The Iraqi army, backed by volunteer forces, has managed to drive ISIL terrorists out of many areas they had seized last year.
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