Iraqi army needs Kurds’ help to retake Mosul – Zebari

Iraqi security forces surround the government complex in central Ramadi, 70 miles (115 kilometers) west of Baghdad in Iraq on Monday, December 28, 2015.

Across the city meanwhile, military engineering teams were clearing bombs from the streets and nearby buildings, al-Belawi said, even as sporadic clashes were underway in outlying parts of the city. In Ramadi, the Iraq Special Operations Forces, a high-trained organization which once stood aloof from the rest of the Army, pushed into the city in conjunction with regular army forces.

But taking the government center of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, is a major symbolic accomplishment for the Iraqi Security Forces.

Describing the fight to push ISIS out of Iraq, Alice notes that Iraq’s security forces are trying to seize momentum and take the fight to ISIS strongholds in Fallujah and Mosul.

The U.S. military carried out at least 29 airstrikes between December 20 and Saturday in and around Ramadi, with more on Sunday, U.S. officials said. The government sidelined the PMF in the Ramadi battle to ensure air support from the US which is reluctant to be seen fighting on the same side as the Iranian-backed militias. “We are coming to liberate Mosul and it will be the fatal and final blow to Daesh”, he said in speech praising the army’s “victory” in Ramadi.

But Warren, the coalition spokesman, said Sunni fighters “were not a significant player” in the assault on Ramadi, but were mainly holding ground already cleared by the army.

The Iraqi army was humiliated in that advance, abandoning city after city and leaving fleets of American armoured vehicles and other weapons in the militants’ hands.

A military spokesman had earlier announced on TV that government forces had retaken the city from the Islamic State group. It was barred from the week-long battle to retake Ramadi to avoid tension with the Sunni population.

Pockets of fighters for IS – also known as Isis, Isil and Daesh – remain dug in in other sectors, however. Gen. Ismail al-Mahlawi estimated that ISIS militants remained in about 30 percent of the city. “Now we put snipers to watch the building we want to clear, then a number of soldiers approach the building carefully to attack it. The new approach is completely different than the old one we were using”.

The IS group still controls much of northern and western Iraq, as well as vast swaths of neighboring Syria.

Iraqi troops say they have come to better understand these tactics and the way coalition airstrikes can best be used when they are on the offensive.

“Mosul will be the main prize for both sides in this conflict, and so it won’t be any time soon – not in the first half of 2016, and probably not the second half either”, said Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert with the London School of Economics, who has just returned from a visit to Baghdad.