Iraqi special forces enter center of IS-held Fallujah

Iraqi troops on Friday entered Fallujah, located in the country’s Anbar province, and took over large parts of the city centre from Islamic State fighters, who appeared to show little resistance, Al Jazeera reported.

Six men sat blindfolded on the pavement, heads bowed patiently, beside a row of concrete barriers illuminated by the headlights of an SUV and a Humvee.

In late March, the government forces launched a military operation aimed at clearing areas between Makmour and the adjacent Qayara areas outside of Mosul, to the east of the Tigris River, and to cut one of the supply lines to the nearby Islamic State-held Shirqat area.

The advance of pro-government forces has since been slow, with Fallujah’s status as a symbolic Islamic State stronghold and a tight siege by Iraqi forces ensuring holdout jihadis have few options other than fighting to the death.

The mass detention of fleeing Fallujah civilians by Shi’ite militias loyal to the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), including the Badr Brigade, are “difficult to prevent”, according to Iraqi Interior Minister Mohammad al-Ghabban.

The government complex in Fallujah includes a number of buildings, among them municipality offices, a police station and other buildings, mostly torched by the terrorists. “The price of our leaving was to bring their families with us”. “And it’s important that it was accomplished by the Iraqi security forces”, he said, shifting attention away from the allied Shiite Muslim militias that have faced allegations of mistreating civilians fleeing the predominantly Sunni Muslim city.

“We have started a massive vaccination programme”, he said, urging donor nations to boost their support for Iraqi civilians fleeing the fighting.

“Victory and liberation should be completed by helping those who were displaced and not to load them with more suffering”, he said. It is unclear whether there were patients in the hospital. The aid group does not have exact figures on how many left, he said.

The breakthrough shifted momentum in the offensive that has raged for weeks, Iraqi officials said.

“The counter-terrorism service and the rapid response forces have retaken the government compound in the center of Fallujah”, AFP cited Lieutenant General Abdulwahab al-Saadi, the operation’s overall commander, as saying. Anbar provincial Gov. Suhaib al-Rawi told reporters Sunday that 49 civilians were killed and 643 others have disappeared. The U.N. human rights chief said there were “credible reports” that people fleeing Fallujah faced physical abuse as they escaped.

Fallujah has been locked in a cycle of conflict since 2003, when it emerged as a bastion of the insurgency against the Americans.

Falluja is a historic bastion of the Sunni insurgency against USA forces that toppled Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, in 2003, and the Shi’ite-led governments that followed. But after USA forces withdrew in 2011, the movement largely disintegrated amid neglect from Baghdad, and the cycle of attacks and arrests resumed.

But with the local population commonly perceived as being sympathetic to the extremists, there have been concerns for the safety of remaining civilians as Iraqi forces advance. Nasr Muflahi, Iraq director for the Norwegian Refugee Council said: “Aid services to the camps were already overstretched and this development will push us all to the limit”. “They had clear rules that you could follow to protect yourself”.

“Political concessions with Sunnis will be needed for the Fallujah operation to sustain any gains”, said Sterling Jensen, an assistant professor at the United Arab Emirates’ National Defense College in Abu Dhabi.