![]() 17: Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announces the start of the operation to liberate Mosul. July 3: ISIS sets off a gigantic suicide truck bomb outside a Baghdad shopping mall, killing almost 300 people, the deadliest attack in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. June 26: Fallujah is declared liberated by Iraqi forces after a five-week battle. ![]() Almost the entire population fled the city. 9: Iraqi forces recapture Ramadi after months of fighting and at enormous cost, with thousands of buildings destroyed. May 20: ISIS captures the ancient Syrian town of Palmyra, where the extremists later destroy archaeological treasures.įeb. airstrikes repel an ISIS onslaught on the town of Kobani on the border with Turkey, the first significant defeat for ISIS.Īpril 1: U.S.-backed Iraqi forces retake Tikrit, their first major victory against ISIS. In Syria, Kurdish fighters backed by U.S. January: Iraqi Kurdish fighters, backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, drive ISIS out of several towns north of Mosul. ![]() 22: The U.S.-led coalition begins an aerial campaign against ISIS in Syria. launches its campaign of airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq. Women and girls are kidnapped as sex slaves hundreds remain missing to this day.Īug. He urges Muslims around the world to swear allegiance to the caliphate and obey him as its leader.Īugust: ISIS captures the town of Sinjar west of Mosul and begins a systematic slaughter of the tiny Yazidi religious community. July 4: Al-Baghdadi makes his first public appearance, delivering a Friday sermon in Mosul's historic al-Nuri Mosque. June 29: The group renames itself the Islamic State and declares the establishment of a self-styled "caliphate," a traditional model of Islamic rule, in its territories in Iraq and Syria. When they threaten Shiite holy sites, Iraq's top Shiite cleric issues a call to arms, and masses of volunteers, largely backed and armed by Iran, join militias. June: ISIS captures Mosul, Iraqi's second-largest city, and pushes south as Iraqi forces crumble, eventually capturing Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit and reaching the outskirts of Baghdad. In Syria, they seize sole control of the city of Raqqa after driving out rival Syrian rebel factions, and it becomes their de facto capital.įebruary: Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri disavows al-Baghdadi after the Iraqi militant ignores his demands that ISIS leave Syria. January: Al-Baghdadi's forces overrun the city of Fallujah in Iraq's western Anbar province and parts of the nearby provincial capital of Ramadi. Here are the key moments in the rise and fall of the Islamic State group:Īpril 2013: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of al-Qaida's branch in Iraq, announces the merger of his group with al-Qaida's franchise in Syria, forming the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
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