ISIS Continues Anbar Offensive, Nearing Haditha

While they remain in de facto control of virtually the whole Anbar Province, ISIS continues to pick off the towns along the Euphrates River one by one, most recently moving against Rawah and nearby Anah, giving them more directions from which to attack the key city of Haditha.

Haditha is home to the Haditha Dam, the capture of which would give ISIS a major hold on electricity generation in Iraq, and the option of flooding certain nearby regions to deny the Iraqi military access to them for counterattack.

The Iraqi military has sent another 2,000 troops to the dam to try to reinforce it from potential attack, and Iraqi military officials are said to be considering opening the floodgates themselves to flood out ISIS territory.

ISIS has been shoring up its control of the area around Haditha for over a week now, and while there has been a lot of fear of them trying to damage the dam to damage the Iraqi power grid, the indications are that they are planning to seize it outright, not damage it.