USA air strikes kill 350 ISIS fighters in Iraqi city of Ramadi

It wasn’t immediately clear if there were any Iraqi casualties.

The advance was hailed as a significant step in efforts to retake Ramadi, a key IS hub 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Baghdad, and fragment the jihadists’ self-proclaimed “caliphate”.

Iraqi forces withdrew in large numbers from the city in May, a pullout regarded as a huge setback to the anti-ISIS campaign, and spurred U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter to question whether the Iraqis lacked the “will to fight”.

“Any decision like this would only come at the request of Prime Minister Abadi, and after explicit sign-off from the president of the United States”, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

In a detailed public explanation of ISIS’ oil trade, Treasury Department official Adam Szubin said militants were selling as much as $40 million a month of oil at production centers then spirited on trucks across the battlelines of the Syrian civil war and sometimes further.

The retaking of the area comes just over a week after Iraqi forces announced the capture of the Palestine Bridge, completing the encirclement of the city.

Syrian Arabs the US military helped to equip in northeastern Syria are fighting alongside Kurdish forces and have recaptured important terrain, such as Hawl and about 900 square kilometers of surrounding territory, he noted, adding that forces are moving south to isolate ISIL’s claimed capital of Raqqa, with the objective to collapse its control over the city.

Iraqi forces regained control of Ramadi, which was lost to ISIS forces in May.

IS captured the city in May after an embarrassing defeat for the Iraqi army.

But leaving isn’t necessarily easy.

“They’re holding civilians as hostages, and as human shields, and so we want to do this in a very careful and deliberate way”, he said. Despite this, people could not flee, as ISIS placed checkpoints around the city to catch anyone trying to leave, according to CNN. “And you know what they will do to an apostate”, said one resident, referring to ISIS’ practice of detaining and killing those who don’t accept its extreme ideology.

Getting people out will be more hard. That didn’t yield immediate results.

Iraqi forces are making advances on the outskirts of the city, while denying that there are large numbers of innocent civilians still trapped in harm’s way. But that the government will win in Ramadi over time seems assured. Despite this, it took over six months for Iraqi troops to even successfully surround the city, and there is no timetable for retaking it. Several weeks ago the administration said it would send up to 50 special operations troops to Syria as trainers and advisers. Pro-government forces have managed to push back the militants from some of their major bastions, including the cities of Tikrit and Baiji in Salahuddin Province, while operations continue to retake positions in Anbar and also in the northern province of Nineveh.

In Iraq, there are also setbacks. Citing distrust of the Shia-led Iraqi government, they urged the committee to consider a similar measure that would expedite the provision of USA equipment and training directly to Sunni forces willing to fight IS.

Sheikh Khatab Al-Amir who is still in contact with members of his tribe inside Ramadi said the insurgents were restricting movement there.