Capture of Ramadi ‘inevitable — USA military

The recapture of the compound would mark another key step toward reasserting full control over Ramadi, whose liberation a CTS spokesman said Tuesday would be achieved in three days.

The jihadists built tunnels to move without being exposed to the coalition s daily raids, but their supply lines have been gradually severed and military officials estimated last week there were no more than 300 fighters left in the city. There is still a lot of “dense terrain” to be negotiated, he said.

“The fight is fairly dynamic in spots”, Warren added, as Iraqi forces proceed slowly past the tightly-packed buildings in the city’s center to avoid mines and improvised explosive devices.

The ISIS, a Sunni Muslim terror organization claims and calls the captured areas in Iraq and Syria as its Islamic caliphate. Iraqi security forces advanced into the center of the city for a final push aimed at retaking the city they lost to the Daesh (the so-called IS) group in May 2015. “We have to be very patient in order not to lose any soldier or any civilian in the area”, Ibrahim said.

“We’ve begun a training program a year ago to train Iraqi forces to be able to take their country back and in the last several weeks, we’ve begun to see that happen”.

Close observers of the conflict were nevertheless buoyed by the developments.

American military advisers remained outside Ramadi at the former USA military hub of al-Taqaddum. “That said, it’s going to be a tough fight”.

On Tuesday, the Dubbat neighborhood saw heavy fighting, with one soldier killed and 14 wounded, said an official in the Anbar operations room, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

US Colonel Steve Warren says there is still a long road ahead.

Such a victory would be a tremendous morale boost for Iraqi forces, and corresponding blow to the Islamic State’s image as irresistible conquerors, while also paving the way for an even more decisive battle to retake the Islamic State’s Iraqi capital of Mosul.

Eid Ammash, a spokesman for the Anbar provincial council, said the council was getting information about the military operations from journalists rather than from the military.

Ramadi will be the second major city after Tikrit to be retaken from IS in Iraq.

“What we want to do is de-couple the two states in the conflict”.

“The fall of Ramadi is inevitable”.

“The families were the reason for the delay in the operation”, Lt. Gen. Abdul Ghani al-Asadi, the head of Iraq’s special forces, said in an interview broadcast on state television. I think Daesh in Ramadi is exhausted.

For his part, Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee in September that “the sustainable defeat of ISIS” would require a political solution in which minority Kurds and Sunnis “are again given a stake” in the country’s future. But, it has managed to hold on to Mosul, Iraq’s strategically-important second city.

Col. Warren said it is impossible to determine whether Islamic State leaders are planning atrocities in Ramadi as they are said to be in Fallujah.

“The end is coming”. The Sunni militant group has focused Iraqi forces, civilians and particularly Shiites.