Starting in January 2014, ISIS took over large areas of Anbar and Ninewa governorates, as well as areas of Kirkuk and elsewhere. Operations to clear these areas from ISIS control and prepare for an advance on Mosul – a city 400 km north of Baghdad currently under ISIS control – have been occurring since 2015. On 17 October 2016, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi announced that military operations to re-take Mosul from ISIS had commenced.

Staff Profile

The humanitarian situation in northwest Syria is at a breaking point. The latest escalation of violence in Idlib province has uprooted more than 235,000 people from their homes, including more than 60,000 children. 

Only days after Hurricane Katrina destroyed a swath of the Gulf Coast in August 2005, the International Rescue Committee dispatched an emergency team of relief experts to Louisiana. For the first time in its 73-year history, the organization responded to a humanitarian crisis in the United States.