Philip Hammond praises RAF role as IS forced from Iraqi city Ramadi

Iraqi military forces yesterday retook a strategic government complex in the city of Ramadi from Islamic State militants who have occupied the city since May, military officials said – a symbolic victory that could help lift the morale of Iraq’s beleaguered security forces as they battle to retake the rest of the city. “2016 will be the year of the big and final victory, when Daesh’s presence in Iraq will be terminated”, he said, using a derogatory Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

“We are coming to liberate Mosul, which will be the fatal blow to Daesh”, he said.

Iraqi armed forces have retaken Ramadi city from Daesh, the Iraqi military announced Monday. Their progress had been slowed by explosives planted in streets and booby-trapped buildings.

Iraqi officials said the next step is to wipe out any pockets of resistance and clear Ramadi and its surroundings of the countless mines and booby traps Islamic State left behind.

But Gen. Ismail al-Mahlawi, head of military operations in Anbar, quickly clarified that Iraqi forces had only retaken the government complex and that parts of the city remained under IS control.

Even before IS rolled in, Ramadi bore scars from the eight-year US intervention in Iraq.

The recapture of Ramadi represents the most significant victory for the Iraqi military against ISIS since the group swept across the country’s northern and western Sunni heartlands from January 2014 onwards. It is imperative to state that the ISIS group still controls much of northern and Western Iraq.

The recapture of Ramadi was welcomed by US Secretary of State John Kerry, who said IS had suffered a major defeat.

Soldiers were shown on state television on Monday publicly slaughtering a sheep in an act of celebration.

A U.S.-led military coalition is supporting Iraq’s campaign to drive ISIL from the country and carried out 630 air strikes during the Iraqi operation in Ramadi. IS fighters have retreated from about 70 percent of city, but still control the rest; government forces still don’t fully control numerous districts from which the IS fighters have retreated.

“Conversely, a return to the sectarian politics that led to the Iraqi government attacking Ramadi protesters in 2013 would pave the way for the return of Islamic State”, he said. Warren back then said that once the city is taken back, security will be assured by Sunni tribal fighters as well as the Anbar police – the local force that has been trained by Italian Carabinieri coalition partners. It has declared a caliphate in the areas under its control and imposed a harsh and violent interpretation of Islamic law. Even if Iraq drives the extremists out, they would retain their grip on large parts of Syria, where an increasingly complex civil war has sucked in regional powers and left the USA with few reliable allies.