ISIS attack on Iraq police trainees kills 12

Until now, Nuri says, the Sunni population of Iraq had been more afraid of the government in Baghdad than they were of ISIS.

He cautioned, “We shouldn’t spike the ball just yet in Iraq, but it seems in the latter part of 2015 and the early stages of 2016 we may see some hope yet in the Iraqi security forces and their government”.

Iraqi Defense Ministry said in a statement the Islamic State group had used 22 bombers in two recent failed attacks in Anbar.

The Iraqi army launched a new offensive on Thursday to recapture the remaining Ramadi neighborhoods still held by the Islamic State.

Iraqi troops retook the city center on Monday, but insurgents are still holed up in parts of the city.

Falih al-Issawi, the deputy head of the Anbar provincial council, said he was personally supervising the interrogation of the detained men.

Iraqi troops and local police were working Friday to clear the city of explosives and break up pockets of resistance.

“The majority of these are outside downtown Ramadi to the north and east”, said Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the US-led anti-Isil coalition. Ban said the group included children. “Fallujah has more of an urban structure where tribes are present but are less a structuring element of the city, so it’s going to be much harder to retake and keep the city under control”, she said from Istanbul. “We had to pick out the bugs before kneading and eating it”, she said. He said his family had hated living under the militants. That entails major political and cultural changes that the US can not bring about with air strikes or Ted Cruz’s carpet-bombing.

Previous battles were fought with the army playing a supporting role behind Iranian-backed Shiite militia fighters, although this risked alienating Sunni Muslim residents in Islamic State-held areas. Most regional and world powers have joined the battle against them, often backing rival groups in complex, multisided civil wars in both Iraq and Syria that make it hard to achieve global unity.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon offered Wednesday to help Iraq restore basic services to Ramadi and allow refugees to quickly return to the city after it was recaptured from jihadists.