Iraqi forces storm into Daesh-held city’s centre

If Iraqi troops recapture Ramadi, it will be the second largest city to be taken back from IS in the past 18 months, boosting morale of the Iraqi security forces and Sunnis opposing IS in Iraq.

Lukman Faily tells the BBC’s Katty Kay that retaking the city would be a “morale booster”, and would show the world that Iraqis are regaining control of their country.

The Iraqi flag was then hoisted on a building in the area, which is near the compound of Ramadi’s governing council, Summeriya said.

Iraqi forces are reporting progress in their effort to retake the city from the Islamic State group. President Obama said recently that the militant group had lost 40 percent of the Iraqi territory it had seized in the middle of past year, as the United States and its allies have intensified their aerial bombardment against the group.

“That’s been the pace we’ve maintained for the past month”, said the coalition’s spokesman, Colonel Steve Warren.

Iraqi security forces, backed by Sunni and Shiite volunteers supported by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes against Islamic State group advanced their position after heavy clashes in the western suburbs of Ramadi, Anbar province, Iraq.

A recent example of this is Tikrit, a Sunni-dominated city that was freed from ISIS earlier this year by a mix of Iraqi Security Forces and Shia militias.

Heavily armed… Iraqi troops are on a mission to retake Ramadi after losing the city in May.

Ramadi fell to the Islamic State in May, in a sudden collapse after a five-month battle.

From the south, troops led by the counter-terrorism agency made progress in the Dubbat and Aramil neighborhoods, about 3 kilometers (less than 2 miles) from the city center, Gen. Ismail al-Mahallawi, the head of operations in Anbar province, told AP.

“We went into the centre of Ramadi from several fronts and we began purging residential areas”.

Warren said Iraqi forces had dropped leaflets telling residents what routes to use to escape.

He also said there were at least thousands of civilians left inside Ramadi, “possibly tens of thousands”.

“They plan to use them as human shields”, spokesman Naseer Nuri said.

On Monday, Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, said that he had agreed to the deployment of 200 American ground forces in Iraq to help with the operations against the Islamic State.

Iraqi spokesman Sabah al-Numan said troops crossed the Euphrates River north of the city and its Warar tributary to the west and pushed into downtown Ramadi.