Iraq’s armed forces stormed the centre of Ramadi yesterday, a spokesman for the counter-terrorism units said, in a drive to dislodge Islamic State militants from their remaining stronghold in a city they captured in May.
The operation to recapture Ramadi, a Sunni Muslim city on the river Euphrates some 100km (60 miles) west of Baghdad, began in early November after a months-long effort to cut off supply lines to the city, whose fall to Islamic State, also known as Isis, was a major defeat for Iraq’s weak government.
Progress has been slow because the government wants to rely on its own troops and not use Shia militias in order to avoid rights abuses such as occurred after the recapture of the city of Tikrit in April.
“Our forces are advancing toward the government complex in the centre of Ramadi,” the Iraqi counter-terrorism units’ spokesman Sabah al-Numani said. “The fighting is in the neighbourhoods around the complex, with support from the air force.”
Ferocious fight
Iraqi intelligence estimates the number of Islamic State fighters entrenched in the centre of Ramadi, capital of Western Anbar province, at between 250 and 300. “It’s [a] ferocious fight, it’s premature to say how long it will take but we can say victory will be achieved in a few days,” Numani said.
Dozens of militants had been killed, said Brig Gen Yahya Rasool, spokesman of the joint operations command, declining to give a casualty toll for the armed forces.
The offensive to capture the city centre started at dawn, said Numani. Military units crossed the Euphrates river into the central districts using a bridge that was destroyed by the militants and fixed by army engineers, and another floating bridge set up to bring in more forces, he said.
“Crossing the river was the main difficulty,” he said. “We’re facing sniper fire and suicide bombers who are trying to slow our advance, we’re dealing with them with air force support.”
If the attack to capture Ramadi succeeds, it will be the second major city after Tikrit to be retaken from Islamic State in Iraq and would provide a major psychological boost to Iraqi security forces after Islamic State seized a third of Iraq last year.
In a briefing, US military spokesman Col Steven Warren said that coalition forces had recovered Islamic State leaflets in the nearby city of Fallujah urging its fighters “ if they lose control of the city” to impersonate Iraqi security forces and commit atrocities.
“Some acts that they’re instructed to do on this document include blowing up mosques, killing and torturing civilians and breaking into homes while dressed as ISF fighters,” Warren said, referring to Iraqi security forces. “They do all this to discredit the ISF.”
A security official in Anbar province said that “ISIS are preventing the people of Ramadi from leaving and using them as human shields.” – (Reuters/New York Times)