Iraqi forces seize part of southern Fallujah from IS

The force of elite troops started a house-to-house operation in the Shuhada suburb.

“The army and the police will be responsible for controlling the neighbourhood after it has been cleared of bombs”, Noman said.

The Iraqi offensive against Islamic State militants in Fallujah has not caused terrorist attacks in Baghdad to subside, as some inside the Iraqi capital expected, a military spokesman in Baghdad said Wednesday.

AP reports from on the ground on the ongoing operation to retake Fallujah.

Falluja has been a bastion of the Sunni insurgency that fought both the USA occupation of Iraq and the Shi’ite-led Baghdad government. Tens of thousands of civilians are estimated to still be in the custody of Iraqi security forces following the string of recent anti-IS territorial victories in Anbar province beginning in December of previous year.

“The situation inside Fallujah is not stable”, he told NBC News.

More than 20,000 people have managed to flee the city in extremely hard conditions, having walked for days and faced Isis fire to reach government-held areas, she said.

One man told CNN that ISIS fighters came to his home and informed him he needed to go to Falluja’s center to be a human shield for the group. Paramilitary troops, made up mainly from Shiite militias, have been tasked with pushing the militants from the outskirts and tightening the siege around Fallujah.

Very few of the civilians have managed to escape, and the problem may be larger than anyone was admitting, with the United Nations now saying they believe some 90,000 civilians are trapped within the sieged city, surrounded by Iraqi troops and militia and with no real humanitarian supplies being allowed in.

“Daesh are concentrating all their forces in this direction”, said Gen. Haider Fadel, one of the commanders of the counterterrorism forces, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State militants.

Government forces backed by Shia militias and US-led airstrikes have captured wide areas surrounding the city from the militants since then.

“Iraqi forces are positioning to move forward”, said Col. Christopher Garver.

Iraq’s special forces units were the one branch of Iraq’s military that was largely untouched by the 2014 collapse.

Iraqi forces, backed by US -led coalition airstrikes, have been fighting to retake the IS-held city of Fallujah since late May but the advance stalled last week because of heavy resistance the militants have put up and because an estimated 50,000 civilians remain trapped inside the city.