VIDEO: Iraqi Families Return Fallujah after City Liberation from ISIS Militants

Sun Sep 18, 2016 19:44:20

Families have begun returning to Fallujah three months after the Iraqi city was declared fully liberated from ISIS terror group, an Iraqi official said on Saturday.

Forty families were cleared to return after they passed background checks and their neighborhoods were deemed safe, Suhaib al-Rawi, governor of the western Anbar province, said.

In total 236 families returned on Saturday to Fallujah and surrounding suburbs, he added.

Fallujah, 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad, had a pre-conflict population of more than 300,000 people.

It was declared "fully liberated" in late June after a month-long operation by Iraqi forces aided by US-led airstrikes. Fallujah was the first Iraqi city to fall to the ISIS terror group in January 2014, AP reported.

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