Iraqi PM visits Ramadi after key victory

“The Iraqi Security Forces, including the Counter-Terrorism Service, the Iraqi Army, the Iraqi Air Force, the federal and local police, and the tribal fighters, have demonstrated their resolve in the fight for Ramadi”, MacFarland said in a statement.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi flew to the western city of Ramadi on Tuesday to celebrate its “liberation” from the Islamic State as jubilant, flag-waving Iraqis thronged the city’s battle-scarred streets with cars and pickups.

Dislodging the militants from Mosul, which had a pre-war population close to 2 million, would effectively abolish their state structure in Iraq and deprive them of a major source of funding, which comes partly from oil and partly from fees and taxes on residents. In his address on the nation Abadi congratulated the Iraqi people for the recapture of Ramadi some 110 km west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and said that “every Iraqi city will come back to our homeland”.

Iraq’s army declared victory over Islamic State fighters in a provincial capital west of Baghdad today, the first major triumph for the US-trained force since it collapsed in the face of an assault by the militants 18 months ago.

The high cost of liberating Ramadi raises questions about whether the same tactics can be brought to bear in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, or other dense urban areas in Iraq and Syria where Islamic State militants live among civilians.

The Islamic State’s past defeats are relied on either Iran-backed Shiite militias or Iraqi Kurdish forces known as the Peshmerga. He added, “2016 will be the year of the final victory and the end of ISIS presence in Iraq”.

“We are coming to liberate Mosul and it will be the fatal and final blow to [ISIL]”.

Authorities have not provided casualty figures from the fighting in the city. “All these other things we’ve seen in the past in other liberated cities, and there are a huge number of different armed groups operating under different flags in Iraq at the moment, and that’s not good for a united Iraq”, he said. “That will be the real challenge”, she said.

Mosul, 400 km (250 miles) north of Baghdad, has been designated by the government as the next target for Iraq’s armed forces after they retook the western city of Ramadi.

Most of the Islamic State militants in the area had probably fled the city already for their stronghold in Fallujah nearer to Baghdad, al-Dulaimi said.

In mid-December, government troops launched a campaign to retake the city from the extremist group.