The Second Battle of Tikrit was a major battle of the Iraqi Civil War, fought from March to April 2015 as the Iraqi Army and the Iranian-backed Shia Popular Mobilization Forces fought to recapture the critical city of Tikrit from the Islamic State.
Tikrit - the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Arab bastion, and a Ba'athist stronghold - fell to ISIL during their Anbar campaign of early 2014. In March 2015, the Iraqi government began an operation to recapture Tikrit from ISIL and its Ba'athist allies, encircling Tikrit by 9 March and pushing into the city on 11 March. 90% of the city's residents fled out of fear of ISIL rule and retaliatory attacks by the Shia militias, with some fleeing as far as Iraqi Kurdistan and Lebanon. From 13 to 30 March 2015, the Iraqi push stalled, and, on 27 March, some of the Iranian-allied Shia militias deserted the campaign when American and British planes began to assist with anti-ISIL airstrikes in Tikrit. From 31 March to 2 April, Allied forces captured much of Tikrit, and, by 4 April - after heavy fighting and several outbreaks of sectarian violence - the situation had stabilized. Pockets of ISIL resistance held out until 17 April, when the last 140 ISIL sleeper agents in the city were killed. ISIL left behind 10,000 IEDs in the city, and it would be months before the streets were once again safe to walk.