Iraqi Military Launches Offensive Against ISIS In Ramadi

Iraq’s armed forces stormed the centre of Ramadi yesterday, a spokesman for the counter-terrorism units said, in a drive to dislodge Islamic State militants from their remaining stronghold in a city they captured in May.

“It’s the biggest city in Iraq’s largest province and the heartland of the Sunni community of Iraq”.

Military planes dropped leaflets on Ramadi over the weekend urging residents to leave in advance of an imminent assault to oust ISIS.

The Iraqi Government also Shia militias supported by Iran fight alongside regular army units.

Iraq’s Summeriya news channel said on Tuesday that the forces carried out successive rounds of shelling against the positions of Daesh in the central district of al-Zobbat.

Iraqi forces erected a temporary bridge over a canal that separated their soldiers from downtown Ramadi, about 80 miles west of Baghdad, and used it to launch a morning offensive, military leaders said.

Colonel Warren said that Iraqi forces had crossed the river by deploying “floating bridges” capable of moving fighters and heavy equipment across the water, as American troops had trained them to do.

“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. Gen. Ahmed al-Belawi, said his men reached Ramadi’s notorious Street 60, a flashpoint for fighting even before the city fell in May. “The numbers aren’t really high, I would say, but in that restricted terrain … it’s not very easy to maneuver through that terrain so it doesn’t take much in the way of defense capability … to hold them back”, Warren said.

Retaking the city, an insurgent bastion that saw some of the deadliest fighting against USA troops a decade ago, would be the Iraqi forces’ most significant victory so far in their fight against IS militants.

On the eve of the Ramadi offensive, the Pentagon reported that US-led coalition air raids killed 350 ISIL fighters in Ramadi.

Iraqi security forces took control of al-Bakr district in southern Ramadi and raised the Iraqi flag on one of the district’s buildings, Brigadier General Jamal al-Delimi told Anadolu Agency.

Much of the city’s center remains in the hands of the extremists, with booby traps and remaining civilians likely to hamper progress. Reclaiming Ramadi would also be a much-needed psychological boost for the Iraqi army, which has floundered as Daesh has seized control of a third of Iraq.