Iraqi Shia militia, known as the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), said on July 2 that they had launched an operation to fortify the border with Syria west of Mosul in order to prevent the return of Islamic State (IS) militants into Iraq.

The organization shared footage on its official YouTube account described as showing its engineering unit using an excavator to create a barrier of soil along the border. A man speaking to camera, and said to be the unit’s commander, says the operation aimed to prevent IS returning to Iraqi territory.

The PMU also shared a statement on their official website saying: “The purpose of establishing these security fortifications is to strengthen the defense lines of our forces and to prevent the infiltration of ISIS.”

Anwar Hamid Nayef, a government spokesman for Iraq’s Anbar province, said on July 2 that an operation to erect a “barbed wire security fence with surveillance towers” along the border with Syria had begun ten days earlier, according to the Iraqi-Kurdish news outlet NRT.

The Iraqi government declared Iraq to be completely free of IS last December. Credit: Media Office for the PMU via Storyful