ISIS running scared: Jihadis fear total annihilation as troops launch major

“We’re encouraged by this tactical development, which is a continuation of the progress we’ve seen over the last several weeks”, he said. Around 300 Islamic State fighters are believed to be hunkered down in the northern reaches of the city.

Last week, President Obama said that ISIS has “has lost about 40 percent of the populated areas it once controlled in Iraq”.

In November, Iraqi security forces, backed by pro-government militias, had wrested control of roughly half of Ramadi.

The offensive to retake Ramadi is backed by police, the army and Sunni tribes opposed to the jihadists.

The US-led coalition said its aircraft carried out six strikes on IS targets in the Ramadi area on Tuesday.

The loss of Ramadi in May was a serious blow to the Shiite-led Iraqi government – and a surprise for US officials; at the time, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter made waves by asserting that Iraqi army troops showed “no will to fight”. “The city has been isolated for a while”, said David Witty, a retired U.S. army special forces colonel and former advisor to CTS. United States officials, concerned also by militant operations over the border in Syria, have expressed frustration at delays in retaking the city.

The fighters are directed to bomb mosques, kill and torture civilians, and break into homes, before withdrawing from Fallujah, he said. Those casualty numbers could not be independently confirmed.

Iraqi airplanes dropped leaflets Sunday urging residents of Ramadi to evacuate within 72 hours, warning of an impending operation, and suggesting two evacuation routes.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, though they bore the hallmarks of the IS, a Sunni militant group that has targeted Iraqi forces, civilians and especially Shiites.

An Iraqi defence ministry spokesman said earlier that ISIL was preventing civilians from leaving Ramadi before the attack on the city.

He said American military advisers remained outside the city at al-Taqaddum, a desert air base that is serving as a training site. And they do this all in order to place blame and to discredit them.

There have been reports that IS has been rounding people up, possibly to use as human shields.

Iraqi forces in Ramadi are moving street by street to force out ISIL militants in the hope of recapturing the city by the end of the week.

The self-declared Islamic State is on the brink of losing control of Ramadi, a city just 55 miles from Baghdad.

IS has lost several key towns in Iraq since Baghdad and the autonomous Kurdish region started fighting back following the jihadist group’s devastating offensive 18 months ago.

“Clearly, this isn’t the behavior of a legitimate government or of a legitimate military force”, he said.

Their presence would be too incendiary in the Sunni heartland of Ramadi and the surrounding province of Anbar, he adds. It would provide a major psychological boost to Iraqi security forces after the militant group seized a third of Iraq previous year.