Slow progress in IS-held Ramadi due to bombs, snipers

Iraqi security forces on Thursday slowed their advance in the city of Ramadi after being hampered by snipers, suicide bombers and bombs planted by the Islamic State (IS) militants, a security source said.

A wave of attacks across Iraq killed at least 15 civilians on Wednesday.

Tuesday’s assault saw rapid initial gains as Iraqi counterterrorism forces and 8th Army Division pushed into the city center from the south and west.

It would provide a major psychological boost to Iraqi security forces after the militant group seized a third of Iraq, a major OPEC oil producer and USA ally, in a sweeping advance past year.

IS struck a major blow in May when it took the capital of Anbar province, in Iraq’s Sunni heartland.

If captured, Ramadi will be the second major city after Tikrit to be retaken from Islamic State militants in Iraq.

Government officials said there are no Shiite militias involved in fighting on the front lines to liberate Ramadi.

“The recruiting base is now something like 85 percent Shia, and that’s just one of the factors hindering the government from building a balanced army”, says White, who is now an adjunct scholar with the Middle East Institute in Washington.

The Islamic State’s loss of Ramadi would be the most significant in a string of recent defeats for the extremist group, which has occupied swaths of Iraq and Syria since past year. Iraqi air force and the US-led worldwide coalition provided air support to troops on the ground, bombing Isis targets, he said. News storiesdisplayed here appear in our category for global and are licensed via a specific agreement between LongIsland.comand The Associated Press, the world’s oldest and largest news organization.

“The fall of Ramadi is inevitable, the end is coming but… it’s going be a tough fight”, the US-led coalition’s spokesman, Col. Steve Warren, told reporters on Tuesday.

So the Iraqi joint military operations command declared its plans to retake the city – but only now has it begun to act on them. Three medical officials confirmed the casualty figures.

Eight air strikes by the US-led coalition hit near the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul and unverified footage has emerged on social media purportedly showing the devastation in the city.

The recapture of Ramadi would further isolate ISIL-held Fallujah – which lies half way on the road to Baghdad – and undermine the viability of the group’s self-proclaimed “caliphate”.

It is noteworthy that non of the pro-Baghdad government Shi´ite militia participate in the campaign against Ramadi, supporting the notion that the recapture of Ramadi is likely to exacerbate both conflicts between Iraqi Kurds and Baghdad as well as the Sunni – Shi´ite tensions in he war-torn country.

But tens of thousands of civilians remain in Ramadi, and “ISIS is surrounding them and preventing them from leaving”, said Hikmet Suleiman, an adviser to the governor of Anbar province.

The Baghdad government has long said it meant to recapture Ramadi before launching an offensive against Mosul, the largest city in Iraq’s north and Islamic State’s main stronghold in the country.