US Says Airstrikes Killed 350 in Ramadi, Iraq, in Past Week

He told The Associated Press on Wednesday the neighbourhood is the backbone of Daesh’s structure in Ramadi.

The Anbar Operations Command complex and Taamim neighborhood retaken by counter-terrorism forces are strategically significant because they overlook other parts of Ramadi which are still under the militants’ control, Rasool and another spokesman for the counter-terrorism forces said.

Though the Iraqi military is continuing to insist they’re achieving a quick, sweeping victory over ISIS in the Anbar Province capital of Ramadi, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter suggested they would likely need help from another United States escalation to “finish the job”. The US has deployed about 3,500 US troops to Iraq in noncombat roles, and Carter announced last week that it would deploy a new “specialized expeditionary force” to augment US special operations forces there and assist local forces.

Just a few weeks ago – hours before the November 13 Paris terror attacks – President Obama said that the terrorist group was contained.

One of the main tasks for Iraqi forces now is to clear the area of bombs planted by ISIS, a favoured tactic of the jihadists that means they can kill security personnel and civilians long after they have withdrawn from an area.

The Military Times reported today that Ash Carter isn’t willing to rule out the use of USA naval and air power as well as “boots on the ground” to help with the battle against ISIS aka ISIL aka Islamic State.

While overall progress in Iraq’s Sunni-populated areas has been slow, the secretary acknowledged, “we are urging the Iraqi government to do more to recruit, train, arm, mobilize and pay Sunni fighters in their communities”.

On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, Gen. Odierno said Wednesday that “you can’t defeat ISIS or destroy ISIS without having people on the ground”.

Daesh had already destroyed all other bridges leading into Ramadi, including those on the Warar River, in a bid to halt the advance of Iraq’s military and its allied volunteer fighters.

“This is a no-kidding force that will be doing important things”, he said, adding that describing it too fully would jeopardize its security.

Committee Chairman John McCain, an Arizona Republican, shot back: “I must say, it’s one of the more embarrassing statements I’ve ever heard from a uniformed military officer, that we are anxious about Syria and Russia’s reaction to saving the lives of thousands and thousands of Syrians who are being barrel-bombed and massacred”. If the Arabs were to assemble a force that could take the IS head on, “we would certainly welcome that”, Carter said. A spokesman for Iraq’s counter-terrorism forces said that strategy has been successful.

Backed by US-led airstrikes, the Iraqi troops have struggled to roll back Islamic State gains since the militants seized large swaths of the country’s north and west, along with territories in neighboring Syria, in the summer of 2014.

“It wouldn’t be appropriate for us to attack largely Arab Raqqa – that they and their success will build, so to speak, a snowball that accumulates more fighters as they go”, the defense chief said. They prevent us from leaving houses.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, a suicide bomber attacked a Shiite mosque, killing at least 11 people and wounding 20 Wednesday, an assault that was promptly claimed by the Islamic State.

The Iraqis began pushing last spring, right after Ramadi fell.

“We’re going through a review at the moment of the first tranche of the training mission that we’re involved in at Taji and that’ll be presented to Cabinet in March, and I think from that time we’ll be able to assess whether or not there’s something else we could do”.