Iraqi ground forces backed by air power arrest the advance of Islamic State militants

The advancing Islamic State (IS) militants in Amariya al-Falluja, 40-Km from Baghdad have been checked by Iraqi ground forces who, backed by air strikes, appear to have halted IS militants, who have been making gains towards the capital Baghdad bbc.com.
Amariya al-Falluja is believed to be a key strategic town and the attacks by Iraqi forces appear to have come as a US-led coalition continues to carry out air strikes on IS targets in Syria and Iraq.
The area around Amariya al-Falluja is now reported to be calm, but there is a standoff along the main road to Falluja to the north, which is controlled by IS.
The Pentagon has confirmed that US air strikes overnight had targeted other IS positions in Anbar province, 80-Km from Baghdad.
In Syria US war planes also struck four more oil fields controlled by IS militants near the group's stronghold in Raqqa. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which monitors the conflict in Syria, has revealed that casualties in US airstrikes were mostly civilians.
The air strikes in Syria appear to be focused on cutting off IS's revenue by targeting oil fields and, US President Barack Obama has indicated that a political solution to the crisis can come only when Sunni and Shia populations come together to defeat the IS jihadists.

Drying up of oil money forces ISIS to seek truce with moderate rebels in Syria

As a result of drying up of precious oil money, the jihadists from the Islamic State have reportedly agreed for a ceasefire with Syrian rebels in a suburb of the capital Damascus dailymail.co.uk. This important dead was agreed between ISIS and moderate and Islamist rebels in Hajar al-Aswad, south of the city, as per reports of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
It seems the ISIS are in dire straits since revenues from black-market oil sales have nosedived following flight of key engineers from the oil fields that had been captured by the terrorists in Iraq and Syria.
The terrorist group has seen revenues from its illegally-held oil fields halved after many workers abandoned the facilities. As per some estimates, the revenue had been nearly $3million per day in July from oil fields that they had seized during the conflict.
According to the deal arrived at, 'the two parties will respect a truce until a final solution is found and they promise not to attack each other because they consider the principal enemy to be the Nussayri regime.' Nussayri indicates the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs.
Incidentally, the ISIS had captured oil fields at Sasan, Ajeel and Sadid in Iraq apart from in Omar in Syria while large refineries have also been captured at Fallujah, Aksas and Tikrit – many of the staff were persuaded to stay on with pay rises or 'at the barrel of a gun.'
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