ISIS Destroys Last Bridge As Iraqi Troops Close In On Ramadi

Iraqi army and counterterrorism units are “now beginning to enter Ramadi neighborhoods from multiple directions”, and have retaken an operations center across the Euphrates from the city center, he said.

Capture of the sprawling western Ramadi district of al-Taamim and the Anbar Operations Command headquarters on Wednesday could advance government efforts to retake Ramadi which fell to Islamic State in May.

Iraqi troops and allied paramilitaries drive down a street in Husayba, a town five miles east of Ramadi, Iraq, on December 6, 2015.

The U.S. military says airstrikes over the past week have killed about 350 Islamic State fighters in the Iraqi city of Ramadi – and that may have reduced by half the number of fighters defending the city.

But even as Carter and Selva highlighted progress made against the terrorist group, Selva said that 40 percent of US war planes return each day without having struck targets in Iraq or Syria.

“U.S. commanders estimate (the Islamic State) will still control Mosul at the end of next year”, McCain said he was told on a recent visit to the region.

Iraqi forces are preparing to push further into the city center of the Islamic State-held city of Ramadi following significant advances on the Anbar provincial capital the previous day, the Associated Press reports.

Carter countered Wednesday that the Pentagon would offer more support in Ramadi, including attack helicopters and US advisers to accompany ground troops, if required and requested by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

That’s the right approach, he said, for three reasons: It takes the fight to the enemy; it seeks to develop capable, motivated, local ground forces to can assure a lasting victory, and it sets conditions for a political solution to the civil war in Syria and inclusive governance in Iraq. And U.S. Special Forces recently ordered to Iraq and Syria by President Barack Obama create “force multipliers” based on their capabilities in intelligence gathering, targeting and enabling local forces, he added.

Since overrunning Ramadi, the Islamic State group has destroyed all the bridges around the city. In November, Pentagon announced it would send special-operations troops to help U.S.-backed rebels in Syria for the first time; the team of about 50, officials said, would advise vetted Syrian and Kurdish rebel groups, and not take part in ground combat. Over the last week alone, Carter said he personally reached out to 40 nations for more help in battling the Islamic State.

One of the main tasks for Iraqi forces is to clear the area of bombs planted by IS, a favoured tactic of the jihadists that means they can kill security personnel and civilians long after they have withdrawn from an area. It also demolished the Anbar operations command and fanned out into the city’s residential areas to set up less conspicuous centres of command.