As ISIL Advances, RFI Reports
As militant extremists with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) have seized strategic areas of western and northern Iraq, RFE/RL’s Iraq Service, Radio Free Iraq (RFI), has kept audiences inside and outside the country informed of unfolding events.
RFI local correspondents are in Mosul, Ramadi, Kirkuk, and Baqouba, cities where fighting has been most intense; and Dohuk and Arbil, the capitals of two Kurdish provinces that are struggling with the influx of displaced people from Mosul and other places.
When the insurgency resulted in the shut-down of RFI’s FM transmitters in Mosul and Tikrit, listeners who have come to depend on RFI since it took to the airwaves in 1998 contacted RFI reporters by telephone to complain about the outage and request that broadcasts resume.
See RFI's video of the aftermath of an air strike in Al-Qaim, near Iraq's border with Syria, on June 25. Iraq authorities confirmed that Syria carried out the attack on ISIL positions in the area.