The Iraqi army, paramilitary Hashd Shaabi force and the border guards force advanced in the vast desert area to free the Akashat village and to clear nearby areas, which is part of Iraq's Anbar province, Xinhua news agency quoted a senior military official as saying.
Akashat is located some 370 km west of Baghdad. It has a population of around 5,000 and was built as an industrial village in 1985 attached to the local phosphate quarry.
The phosphate production was seriously disrupted by the UN sanctions after 1991 and the 2003 war. It has currently stopped operations due to the presence of the IS.
Iraqi aircraft also dropped thousands of leaflets on the area to inform the people that the liberation is soon and to tell IS militants to choose the Iraqi forces and get a fair trial or death by the security forces
Earlier, the Iraqi security forces dislodged IS militants from the key cities of Anbar province, including Ramadi and Fallujah, but the areas near the border with Syria, including Aana, Rawa and al-Qaim as well as the vast rural areas across the province are still under the control of the extremists.
The soldiers of the 15 Infantry Division, backed by helicopter gunships, killed 65 IS terrorists and 15 suicide bombers wearing explosive belts at a village near the town of Ayadhiyah, some 11km north of Tal Afar, Xinhua news agency cited a the Joint Operations Command (JOC) statement as saying.
The troops also destroyed two vehicles and four IS hideouts, it said.
Several terrorists fled the area and surrendered to the nearby defensive line of the Kurdish Pehmerga forces at the edge of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan, the statement added.
On August 31, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared full liberation of the city of Tal Afar and surrounding areas from the extremist IS terrorists.
Abadi made the statement on Monday during a visit to the battleground in western Mosul, where he met commanders of the Iraqi security forces and leaders of the paramilitary Hashd Shaabi units, Xinhua news agency reported.
"The enemy (IS) is in a state of collapse and cannot achieve any of its goals in Mosul, which once they considered their capital," Abadi said.
According to the Prime Minister, the security forces have freed about 95 per cent of Mosul.
"Life is returning to normal on the left bank of Mosul (eastern side of Mosul) and on the right bank (western side) most of it has been freed. We will soon declare full liberation of the city," he said.
Abadi also hailed the advance of the Hashd Shaabi units to the border with Syria and their liberation of many towns and villages, including villages of Yazidi minority who were brutally attacked by the IS.
"These days, the Hashd Shaabi freed large areas, including areas of Iraqi Yazidis seized by the criminal Daesh (IS), who killed the citizens and kidnapped their women," Abadi said.
"It is a matter of time and we will return those Yazidi families to their places," he promised.
Abadi, who is also the commander-in-chief of Iraqi forces, arrived in Mosul in the afternoon and held meetings with top commanders of the Iraqi army.
He also visited the Hashd Shaabi's Operations Command headquarters in west of Mosul and met Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Hashd Shaabi units.
According to a Hashd Shaabi units statement, they pushed to the border line on Monday morning from the newly-freed town of al-Qahtaniyah, some 18 km east of the Syrian border, making their first arrival to the border line in south of Sinjar mountain.
The latest advance is part of a major offensive designed to secure the border areas with neighbouring Syria and cut off IS supply routes between Mosul and the Syrian city of Raqqa, the capital of the IS self-declared caliphate.
Maan al-Saadi, commander of CTS special operations, said the forces have taken control of 70 per cent of al-Saha neighbourhood in north of the IS-held old city centre and killed around 70 IS militants, most of them foreigners and non-Iraqi Arabs, in the battles during the past two days.
The operations near the Syrian border came as Iraqi forces, backed by the anti-IS international coalition, were conducting a major offensive to dislodge IS militants from their major stronghold in western Mosul.
Mosul, 400 km north of Baghdad, has been under IS control since June 2014, when government forces abandoned their weapons and fled, enabling militants to control parts of Iraq's northern and western regions.
"A steady flow of capable personnel is crucial in sustaining the counter-offensive against the terrorist group," Major General Tim Gall, the Commander Joint Forces New Zealand said, Xinhua news agency reported.
Many of the forces trained by the joint New Zealand-Australian Task Group Taji had joined the assault to reclaim the western part of Mosul, said Gall.
Some formed part of stabilisation forces who were working to ensure the gains made against the IS in other parts of Iraq were sustained.
"We've helped build a fighting force that's contributing to the current offensive against IS. But apart from force generation, we are also training the next generation of Iraqi military leaders who will be responsible for protecting their country in the future," he said.
Task Group Taji, which comprised about 100 New Zealand troops and 300 Australian Defence Force personnel, had trained more than 21,000 Iraqi government forces since its training mission began in May 2015.
Since last October, the NZDF had sent small groups of training and force protection teams to other secure training locations in Iraq.
New Zealand soldiers had also been training stabilisation forces such as the Iraqi Border Guards in addition to the Iraqi Army.
Originally set for two years, the NZDF contribution to the international Building Partner Capacity mission in Iraq was extended by the government to November 2018.
Acting on intelligence reports, the CTS forces backed by Iraqi and international coalition aircraft, stormed into the Ayn al-Jahash area south of the provincial capital of Mosul, the former stronghold of the IS, Xinhua news agency reported citing the military as saying in a statement on Sunday.
The CTS forces were engaged in fierce clashes with IS militants in the area for two successive days, Yahia Rasoul, spokesman of the Commander-in-Chief of the Iraqi forces, said in the statement.
The troops forced the IS militants to withdraw and hole up in their hideouts in tunnels and caves, prompting the CTS troops to storm their hideouts even with hand grenades, he added.
The operation resulted in the killing of 42 IS militants, including five of their local leaders, and the seizure of weapons and ammunition inside the hideouts, according to Rasoul.
The operation came as the extremist group have intensified their attacks on the security forces and civilians in the formerly IS-controlled Sunni provinces, resulting in the killing and wounding of dozens.
The security situation in Iraq has been improving since the security forces fully defeated the IS militants across the country in 2017.
(IANS)