Capture of Ramadi ‘inevitable — United States military

The operation was undertaken by a mixture of soldiers, police officers and Sunni tribesmen opposed to the Islamic State, with close air support from the United States, which conducted 12 strikes around Ramadi on Tuesday.

A USA military spokesman predicted the capture of Ramadi by government troops was “inevitable”, but Colonel Steve Warren also said it’s going to be a “tough fight” that will “take some time”.

Though outnumbered, Islamic State fighters have frequently used improvised explosive devices, booby-trapped buildings and suicide auto and truck bombings to redress that battlefield deficit.

The Iraqi military forces launched a military operation to retake the provincial capital from IS amid reports IS was preventing civilians from leaving the city.

Iraq’s defence minister Khaled al-Obeidi says the fightback against IS has seen the area of Iraq controlled by the jihadists shrink from almost 40% a year ago to 17%.

The army says it controls more than half the city, including a key military command centre.

A success against Islamic State in Ramadi, coupled with the visit to China, offers a much-needed boost to Mr. Abadi’s sagging political stature at home.

Iraqi commanders have said they believe they can completely retake the city by the end of the year. “The fighting is in the neighborhoods around the complex, with support from the air force”.

“There is an ongoing operation to control a sector in preparation of the onslaught on the city centre within the coming hours, God willing”, he said.

“If you look at the trajectory of Al Qaeda in Iraq and now the Islamic State, they find space where the population is disaffected from the government”, Crocker said.

Those remaining did not appear to be giving up easily.

Progress has been slow because the government wants to rely on its own troops and not use Shia militias in order to avoid rights abuses such as occurred after the recapture of the city of Tikrit in April. Those casualty numbers could not be independently confirmed.

Reuters reported that Iraqi military planes dropped leaflets over Ramadi on Sunday that warned residents to leave the city within 72 hours, advised them to carry proper identification, and provided safe routes out.

Iraqi military leaders said that it would take just a few days to clear central Ramadi of militants, although this should be taken with a pinch of salt, given that the government has already twice announced major operations to take back Ramadi and its surrounding Anbar province without any success. Warren estimated that thousands or even tens of thousands of civilians were still in the city; hundreds of thousands of others have fled. “They do all this to discredit the ISF”.

“It’s the behavior of thugs, it’s the behavior of killers, it’s the behavior of terrorists”, Col. Steven Warren, a spokesman for the US-led, anti-ISIS coalition, told reporters in a press briefing on Tuesday.

The latest offensive came as the security forces have recently made significant advance in Ta’mim district in southern Ramadi and several areas on the edges of the city as part of their efforts to flush out IS militants from Ramadi.

Iraqi soldiers advance in northern Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, on Monday, Dec. 21, 2015. It was also the biggest defeat since IS militants swept through areas in the country’s north and west, including Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul in the summer of 2014.

The US has offered “advisers” and attack helicopters for the battle, but Iraq refused.

Their presence would be too incendiary in the Sunni heartland of Ramadi and the surrounding province of Anbar, he adds.