IS puts up heavy fight to slow Iraqi troop advance on Ramadi

Government forces held off months of Daesh assaults in Ramadi until May 2015, when the jihadists blitzed their opponents with massive suicide auto bombs and seized full control of the city.

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. “The liberation of dear Mosul will be achieved with the cooperation and unity of all Iraqis after the victory in Ramadi”, Mr Abadi said.

“The district is cleared from Daesh elements, but there are still bombs and booby traps remaining intact”, said Major General Ismail al-Mahlawi, a commander of the Anbar Operation, adding that experts with the engineering unit of the army have already began demining streets and houses of Zawiyah.

Government officials said there are no Shiite militias involved in fighting on the front lines to liberate Ramadi.

Ramadi was ISIL’s biggest prize of 2015, abandoned by government forces in May in a major setback for Baghdad and for the Iraqi troops that have been trained by the USA since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Warplanes from the US-led coalition carried out 27 strikes against insurgent position in the last district they hold in the centre of the Sunni Muslim city, which lies on the river Euphrates some 100 km (60 miles) west of Baghdad, according to a military statement on state TV.

Al-Mahlawi, head of the Anbar military operations, says Iraqi troops are now about one kilometer (half mile) from the complex.

Taking back Ramadi has not been easy, and the fight isn’t over yet. The latest fighting around the government complex left at least two members of the Iraqi security forces dead and nine wounded, according to Ahmed al-Dulaimi, a police captain.

Some of them were in camps with other displaced people in Anbar, while others headed to Baghdad or the northern autonomous Kurdish region.

The push to reclaim Ramadi is part of a broader mission launched by the USA and Iraqi government’s to push ISIS out of Iraq and contain it in Syria.

The Baghdad government has long said it meant to recapture Ramadi before launching an offensive against Mosul, the largest city in Iraq’s north and Islamic State’s main stronghold in the country.

It was the Iraqi forces’ worst defeat in the war against IS, and a victory now would give a boost to the often criticised federal forces.