Iraqi forces, Shiite militias repel Daesh attack in Anbar

NEW YORK: Iraqi troops and Shia militiamen have reportedly repelled an attack launched by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) that left 10 soldiers dead in Anbar province.

(MENAFN – The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) A total of 25 people were killed and some 50 others wounded in clashes with Islamic State (IS) militants and suicide bomb attacks across Iraqon Tuesday, security sources said.

Lawrence Al Hardan, a Sunni tribal sheikh from Anbar, said tribes had urged the army to drive Daesh from Fallujah well before the fall of Ramadi because “the masterminds of Daesh use Fallujah as a launchpad in nearly all attacks in Anbar”.

Separately, the security forces and Hashd Shaabi militias fought fierce battles with the IS militants in areas northwest of Baghdad near the IS-held town of Garma, some 40 km west of Baghdad, killing 14 militants along with destroying some of their positions and a vehicle carrying a heavy machine gun, said a statement from the Baghdad Operations Command (BOC). Some were hiding in houses in a nearby village.

But a USA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested a lack of Iraqi army control of militia activities in Falluja would prevent the kind of air support for the campaign that the United States has offered elsewhere in Iraq.

Iraqi forces, backed by Shiite militias, have been struggling to recapture areas lost to IS in the country’s west and north.

Daesh seized Anbar’s capital Ramadi two months ago, extending its control over the Euphrates river valley west of Baghdad and dealing a major setback to Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi and the US-backed army he entrusted with its defence.

As said by Abdul Mahdi al Karbalei during a Friday sermon in the city of Karbala, “The continuation of the policy of carelessness and giving a blind eye on the flow of these fighters to Iraq will increase the danger of these gangs to Iraq and they will represent a threat to their countries”.

In neighboring Syria’s northeastern city of Hassakeh, intense clashes erupted between IS fighters and Syrian troops, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Syrian state TV.

The loss of Ramadi was the army’s worst defeat since Islamic State militants swept through north Iraq last summer, and pushed plans for an eventual offensive against the Islamists’ northern stronghold Mosul further back.