Iraqi troops advance in Ramadi, pockets of IS remain

The northern Iraqi, predominantly-Sunni city has become a base for the militant group and retaking it has become a key goal for the Iraqi military.

After encircling the provincial capital for weeks, Iraqi forces launched an assault to retake it last week and made a final push to seize the central administration complex yesterday.

Members of the Iraqi security forces celebrate after retaking Ramadi city from Daesh, in Ramadi, Iraq on December 28, 2015.

“The Iraqi counterterrorism forces have raised the Iraqi flag over the government complex in Anbar”, Rasool added, saying the fighting will continue until the whole city is liberated.

The army on Sunday announced it had seized the center of Ramadi from Islamic State, scoring its first major victory against the militant group.

Ramadi, capital of the mainly Sunni Muslim Anbar province in the Euphrates River valley west of Baghdad, had been Islamic State’s biggest prize of 2015.

A senior army commander said his forces were sweeping the outskirts of the city for potential pockets of jihadists. Anbar, including Ramadi, was a major focus of that campaign at the height of the 2003-2011 US war in Iraq.

The militias were held back from the battlefield in Ramadi this time to avoid antagonizing the mainly Sunni population.

However, other Iraqi cities in Anbar province, such as Fallujah, Ar Rutbah, Habbaniya, and Al Qaim are still controlled by ISIS.

For its part, the United States is leading a coalition of nations in airstrikes against IS meant to aid Iraqi troops and Kurdish fighters who are battling the terror group.

The prime minister congratulated the security forces on their recapture of Ramadi, which they had lost in May following a devastating jihadist onslaught.

The jihadists were said by Iraqi generals to have been forced out of the centre and the local government headquarters in the city west of Baghdad, the loss of which in July was a severe blow to Baghdad.

If the government retains control of Ramadi, which was seized by IS fighters in May, it would become the first city recaptured by Iraq’s US-trained army since it fled from the hardline militants in June 2014.

Its rise was aided by the swift collapse of the Iraqi army, which abandoned city after city, leaving fleets of armoured vehicles and other American weapons in the fighters’ hands.

“The troops only entered the government complex”, al-Mahlawi told The Associated Press.

The two months it took to carry out the offensive allowed time for U.S.-led airstrikes to soften Islamic State targets and for many civilians to escape to safety.

Iraq’s future depends on building a truly competent military that is representative of the nation’s ethnic and religious mix, and on Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi fulfilling his pledge to protect the nation’s Sunni minority.