Iraqi forces poised to take full control of Ramadi

An Iraqi military base north of Baghdad was targeted by multiple suicide bombers, who killed at least 15 security troops and injured at least 22 others.

They are reported to be police from Nineveh province, training to take it back from IS.

News of the mission in Ramadi came after it was revealed another SAS sniper stopped a group of jihadis launching a suicide bomb attack by killing the terrorists with just three bullets in a dramatic shoot-out in an ISIS-held part of Iraq.

He also said 20 policemen were wounded in the attack, which took place in the middle of the night.

Ban made the offer during a telephone conversation with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi who visited Ramadi after his forces drove out Islamic State fighters.

The ministry describes the attacks as “painful and poignant blows” to the terror group, created to cut off its supply lines.

“The government will need to control Fallujah before Mosul”, Jabbar Al Yawar, secretary-general of the peshmerga – the forces of the Kurdish regional government fighting Daesh in northern Iraq – told Al Hadath TV.

“‘The suicide attacks had been stopped and, without any command and control, the Isis fighters had retreated into another part of the city”.

“We saw them when we left our houses, we saw their dead bodies in the streets”, she said.

“The expulsion of ISIL by Iraqi security forces, supported by our global coalition, is a significant step forward in the campaign to defeat this barbaric group and restore Iraq’s territorial sovereignty”.

“It’s a big, big, big city, and it is going to take a lot of effort”, Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for the coalition against ISIS, told CNN.

After taking the strategic government complex in the centre of the city, elite counter-terrorism forces have been expanding their grip and sweeping each neighbourhood for holdout jihadists and trapped civilians.

“We don’t think the enemy has enough combat power in downtown Ramadi to be able to recapture the city”, he said.

Iraq’s Ministry of Defence has released video showing Islamic State trucks and militants being destroyed in a succession of air strikes. Daesh later claimed responsibility for the blasts in an online statement.