AL-QAIM: They emerge timidly from houses to survey the debris-strewn streets of their town. As Iraqi forces hunt down diehard jihadists, Al-Qaim residents recall three years of hell in “open-air prison”, reports AFP.

“At last we’ll be able to sleep easily without worrying about air raids or being arrested,” says a smiling clearly relieved Qassem Derbi.

“We’re no longer afraid of going to prison or anything else.”

Iraqi forces took Al-Qaim, one of the last refuges in Iraq of the Islamic State group, on Friday.

As members of Iraq’s military deploy in the streets of Al-Qaim, dust-covered not only from the destruction of warfare but also by a sandstorm, Derbi spoke of life under IS.

The jihadist group entered the important desert town a few kilometres (miles) from the border with Syria in 2014, and quickly made its presence felt.

“We weren’t allowed to use phones, we couldn’t sleep, we had no rights to do anything at all,” says the young Iraqi.

“We were living in an open-air prison where we were only allowed to walk around—anything else would be held against us.”

On Sunday, for the first time in more than three years, Iraq’s national flag was once again raised in Al-Qaim—by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

Iraq’s authorities are now battling the final pockets of jihadists in their last footholds around the town, and Syrian troops are also approaching, hemming them in on their side of the frontier.

‘Oppression and humiliation’ -

After the IS offensive, Iraq’s western desert in Anbar province and its porous border entrenched itself as a jihadist smuggling and supply route.

Standing outside his home in Al-Qaim, a clean-shaven Aqil Mussa tells AFP of a life of “oppression and humiliation” under IS.

“We had access to nothing—no schools, no electricity, no water. We even lacked bread,” he says, his throat tightening.

Derbi says that patience paid off for the small number of Al-Qaim residents who stayed, out of the 50,000 who lived there before IS swept in.