ISIS forces have now surrounded Baghdad on three sides–
Fallujah to the West, Tikrit to the north and the towns of Saadiyah and Jalawla towards the North Eastern and Eastern areas of the capital.
ISIS is pressing towards the capital on three flanks. They are at Baqubah about 50 miles to the northeast. At Samarra about 50 miles to the north. And at Fallujah in the west.
Sam Kiley from Sky News reported on the situation in Iraq.
ISIS also controls the water supplies to Baghdad.
Above Top Secret reported:
Despite the apparent suddenness, ISIS’s assault on Iraq has been brewing for six months. Last January, ISIS started fighting its way from Syria down the Euphrates river into Iraq. In May it captured the town of Fallujah, the scene of bloody fighting during the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. This week, ISIS captured Iraq’s second-largest city Mosul, on the Tigris river, then advanced down the Tigris to the town of Tikrit, and beyond it to the Shiite holy town of Samarra. Both Samarra and Fallujah are within striking distance of the capital Baghdad.
It is not clear at the time of writing whether ISIS will launch a military attack on Baghdad, or even if it could take the heavily armed city in a pitched battle.
But it may not need to. Iraq is ancient Mesopotamia, the once-fertile floodplain of the Tigris and Euphrates that cradled the first human civilisation. The rivers remain crucial to the farming on which most Iraqis depend, according to a report by the International Centre for Agricultural Research on the Dry Areas, which was once based in Aleppo, Syria, but has now decamped to Amman in Jordan to avoid fighting.
ISIS now controls several major dams on the rivers, for instance at Haditha and Samarra. It also holds one 30 kilometres north of Mosul that was built on fragile rock and poses a risk of collapse. It holds at least 8 billion cubic metres of water.
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