Iraqi troops clear IS mines in recaptured areas of Fallujah

Their next target is the Salahuddin town of Gayara, the military said. He said they were having to reintroduce people to food slowly, after months of eating little but dates and animal feed and drinking river water contaminated by dead bodies. The campaign will also be supported by US-led airstrikes.

But IS still firmly controls northern neighbourhoods of Fallujah where it is believed to be holding thousands of civilians as human shields. Burned-out shells of cars lay overturned outside buildings riddled with bullet holes.

Al-Abadi, however, is under pressure to score a quick win against the militants after mass street protests in Baghdad against his government. Most were killed by airstrikes, Saedi said. Before the battle began, only 700 Islamic State militants had been estimated to be inside.

At a camp in Amiriyat Falluja on Thursday, Fatima Khalifa said she had not heard from her husband and their 19-year-old son since they were taken from a nearby town two weeks earlier. More than 80,000 civilians have fled Fallujah and its surrounding areas since the operation to retake the city from IS was announced last month, according to the United Nations.

“They say it is in the hundreds”, he said.

“Needs: tents, water, supplies”, the agency tweeted.

The government forces were advancing along a desert path west of the main highway linking Baghdad to Mosul which is lined with mines and runs through villages that have a heavy Islamic State presence, said Col. Mohammed al-Assadi, an Iraqi army spokesman. It is one of a string of successes for Iraq’s elite forces, as cities held by the Islamic State fall one by one.

It was not clear where the patients in the hospital are, if there are any, al-Obeidi said.

Col. Christopher C. Garver, a USA military spokesman in Baghdad, said coalition airstrikes on Friday aided the taking of the government building in Fallujah by knocking out two heavy machine guns nearby that were slowing the advance of Iraqi forces.

Fallujah, though, holds particular importance. The city is the last remaining territory held by the extremist militants along the Syria-Turkey border.

Iraqi security forces celebrate as they pose with a flag of the Islamic State group they captured in central Fallujah, Iraq, after fight against the Islamic State militants Friday, June 17, 2016.

“We congratulate all Iraqis on this victory, and (another) victory is close, very close with God willing in Mosul to drive out the last IS militant from the land of Iraq”, Abadi said.

“Your leaders have made promises to you and let you down”. “You do not have a place in Iraq, you will be judged for all your crimes”.

Al-Obeidi said there were no civilians in al-Nazzal. But by evening, the special forces commander Brig.

The militants “realized it’s a lost cause, and they are running away”, said Maj. Daesh took over Mosul in June 2014 in what was a humiliating defeat of the Iraqi army.

Iraqi forces’ victory “is important in terms of Iraqi politics-Fallujah was seen as a auto bomb factory for Baghdad”, Douglas Ollivant, a former U.S. Army Cavlary officer and White House aide in charge of Iraq, told TIME magazine.

He said there were no plans to storm the hospital. The central Jolan and Mualimin neighborhoods had not yet been secured, commanders said.

IS fighters launched missiles, detonated a suicide vehicle bomb and deployed snipers against Iraqi forces, Brig. Abadi said he expected the final militants to be expelled within hours.