Ramadi ‘fully liberated’ from IS militants

Iraqi forces launched an assault on the city last week and made a final push to seize the central administration complex on Sunday.

Brig. Gen. Ahmed al-Belawi told The Associated Press that IS militants stopped firing from inside the government complex at around 8 a.m. Monday and said troops were encircling it as engineering teams cleared booby traps.

Military activities were expected to resume early Monday and though the security official anticipated a surge of suicide attacks as remaining fighters lost hope, he said he expected to announce victory over the militants “sometime Monday afternoon”.

The complex was thought to have been the last holdout for a few dozen ISIS militia members who had tried to slow the Iraqi advance through the city with snipers and improvised explosive devices.

The extremists control large swaths of land in western and northern Iraq and in neighboring Syria.

US Army Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the US-led coalition backing Iraqi forces, said: “The clearance of the government centre is a significant accomplishment and is the result of many months of hard work”.

Iraqi military spokesman Brig.

ISIS, which captured the city in May, is mostly Sunni and Ramadi was its most important prize in 2015.

One of the main challenges of the conflict since then has been rebuilding the Iraqi army into a force capable of capturing and holding territory.

The expected loss of Ramadi would be the latest in a series of defeats for Isis in recent months in both Iraq and Syria, which has prompted the group’s leader and self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to issue a rare audio recording meant to reassure his followers. If the recapture of Ramadi is confirmed, it will be the first major city seized from Islamic State by Iraq’s military, which in past battles against the militants had operated mainly in a supporting role alongside Iran-backed Shi’ite militias.

Its rise was aided by the swift collapse of the Iraqi army, which abandoned city after city, leaving fleets of armoured vehicles and other American weapons in the fighters’ hands.

“We didn’t expect them to retreat from a number of Ramadi areas today, where we entered without any resistance, as if they evaporated”, he said.

The U.S.-led coalition that has been launching airstrikes on ISIS targets addressed the positive development Monday.

“We will liberate all the other places like we liberated Jurf al Nasser and Tikrit and Baiji and other areas”, he said.

The looming question for Iraqi’s military now is where to from here, as the Islamic State group still hold other major cities.

Fighting in and around the city is likely to continue for some time, analysts say. “It will take years to return life to the city”.