Battle of Samarrah

The Samarrah Offensive, named for an Iraqi city located about 80 miles north of Baghdad, took place from 13th of March to 23rd of April 1917 and resulted in a British victory. It was part of the larger Mesopotamian Campaign against the Ottoman Empire that lasted from November 1914 to November 1918.
On 11th of March 1917, an Anglo-Indian force took Baghdad from the Ottomans, but many thousands of Ottoman soldiers were able to escape and re-establish themselves in a line north of the city. Another large Ottoman force was retreating to northern Iraq from northern Persia, from whence they had been pushed out by a Russian army that had advanced south from the Caucasus. The British were concerned that these two Ottoman forces would join together and pose a renewed threat to Baghdad. To help forestall this possibility, the regional British commander decided to seize the railway running through Samarrah. This would impede the consolidation of Ottoman forces while facilitating the movement of British troops.
On 13th of March, a force of 45,000 Anglo-Indian soldiers moved north from Baghdad and forced an Ottoman retreat to the confluence of the Tigris and Adhaim rivers, about 20 miles southeast of Samarrah. On 19th of March, Fallujah, a city located west of Baghdad on the Euphrates River, fell to the British. This stopped any potential Ottoman attempt to flood the plain between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in order to prevent further British movement northward.
An initial British attempt on 25th of March to intercept the Ottoman group moving west from Persia failed, but on 31st of March they were able to capture the town of Dogameh south of the Tigris-Adhaim confluence, forcing an Ottoman retreat to the north. Continued British pressure during the following three weeks forced further Ottoman withdrawals to the north until finally, on 23rd of April, Samarrah and its railway fell to the British.

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