Iraqi troops advance in battle for IS-held city of Ramadi

The spokesman added that Iraqi military units in the city had “support from the air force” as well as US-led airstrikes. It also demolished the Anbar operations command and fanned out into the city’s residential areas to set up less conspicuous centres of command.

Iraqi forces were less than a half-mile away from the main government complex after advancing through four key areas of southern Ramadi, al-Nuaman said.

“It’s a slow process”, the US military spokesman in Iraq, Col. Steve Warren, told a recent briefing. This came after a months-long attempt to cut off supply lines to the city, which is 60 miles west of Baghdad. Many commanders blamed a lack of USA air support for the city’s fall in May, when a multipronged auto bomb attack caused the collapse of the troops that had withstood Islamic State attacks for a year and a half.

The most significant IS-held city in Iraq is Mosul, capital of the Nineveh province, where Iraqi Peshmerga forces have played a prominent role on the ground against IS militants.

Iraqi troops stand guard with the national flag at their army headquarters in northern Ramadi.

The city was one of “three R’s” identified as the core of a triple-pronged US strategy against ISIS that Carter floated before USA lawmakers in October.

“The distance between our forces and the governmental compound, which is located in the central district of Hoz, is less than a kilometre”, or 500 yards, said the brigadier general.

Even if the Iraqi military finally does reclaim Ramadi from the Islamic State, regional experts warn, the Sunni city will not take kindly to being overrun by the Shiite-dominated Iraqi military.

According to another military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to talk to the press, 15 families had managed to escape from Hoz in the past 24 hours.

American-backed Iraqi forces erected a makeshift floating bridge across a branch of the Euphrates River on Tuesday and began pushing troops and vehicles into Ramadi’s city center.

In Iraq, a dozen strikes near four cities hit several Islamic State tactical units, vehicles, weapons caches, fighting positions and other targets, the Combined Joint Task Force said.

On Monday, analysis by IHS Jane’s suggested that IS had lost 14 percent of its overall territory in Iraq and Syria, about 12,800 sq km over the past year.

He predicted that “the city will be cleared within the coming 72 hours”.