The Hawija Offensive: A Liberation Exposes Faultlines | Combating Terrorism Center at West Point...

"he Hawija campaign was initiated on September 21, 2017, when a constellation of Iraqi forces—including the army’s 9th Armored Division, the Emergency Response Division, Iraqi Special Operations Forces known as the Golden Division, elements of the Federal Police, and Iranian-backed Shi`a militias—began an offensive from the southwest4 to remove the Islamic State from a pocket of territory around the small city of Hawija in the western reaches of Kirkuk Governorate. Hawija had been the group’s last significant urban territorial holding in Iraq. In the second week of the coalition-supported Hawija campaign, according to official press releases, the United States carried out a total of 23 airstrikes in support of the Hawija operation between September 28 and when the operation for Hawija city largely concluded on October 5."