Tal Afar News

"The joy of victory has been completed and the entire province of Nineveh has become in the hands of our heroic forces," Abadi said.

Tal Afar was the last major population centre in northern Iraq still under jihadist control and its loss deprives IS of what was once a key supply hub between its territory in Syria and Iraq.

Iraq`s government declared on Thursday that its forces had retaken the northern city of Tal Afar and the rest of Nineveh province, once almost entirely controlled by Islamic State group jihadists.

A car bomb killed at least eight people in a crowded vegetable market in a Shi`ite Muslim district of Baghdad on Monday, police and medics said.

A car bomb exploded in a market in the Iraqi capital`s Shiite-majority district of Sadr City on Monday killing 11 people and wounding another 26.

In Iraq, the jihadist group now only controls the city of Hawija, about 300 kilometres (185 miles) north of Baghdad, and desert areas along the border with Syria.

Iraqi forces have retaken almost all of Tal Afar, Islamic State`s stronghold in the country`s northwest, the Iraqi military said in a statement on Sunday.

The quick collapse of Islamic State in Tal Afar, a breeding ground for jihadist groups in Iraq, confirmed Iraqi military reports that the militants lack command and control structures in the areas west of Mosul.

The CTS and federal police units had also seized three northern districts and the Al-Rabia neighbourhood west of the citadel, a day after taking the district of Al-Talia to the south. 

The US role is less conspicuous this time, and the historic citadel is no longer standing because Islamic State blew it up.

Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have fled Tal Afar as Shi`ite paramilitary groups close in the Islamic State-held town on the road between Mosul and Raqqa, the main cities of the militant group`s self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

Cutting the western road to Tal Afar would seal off Mosul as the city is already surrounded to the north, south and east by Iraqi government and Kurdish Peshmerga forces.  

The residents said they believed up to 200 people were killed in the weeks before Islamic State withdrew from the town.

Tal Afar was a Shiite-majority town before the Sunni extremists of IS overran it in 2014, and its recapture is a main goal of Shiite militia forces.

The aerial assault, which took place around 1830 GMT, was conducted jointly with the US Air Force and last about five hours, the French defense ministry said in a statement.