“The end is coming”.
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A spokeswoman for Canada’s federal department of Global Affairs called Lim’s life sentence “unduly harsh”. Canada has called for the North to release him, condemning the North’s move.
“There’s still a long way to go”, Col. Warren said Tuesday.
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The recapture of Ramadi, which is in the center of Iraq, about 60 miles from Baghdad, would be the most important in a series of recent setbacks for the Islamic State.
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Ramadi fell to the Islamic State in May, in a sudden collapse after a five-month battle.
A video filmed by soldiers shows a large column of captured ISIL supporters kneel in the dirt in single file, their hands handcuffed with their heads bowed as an Iraqi army commander laughs and jeers in their faces.
Last month, government forces completed their encirclement of the predominantly Sunni Arab city, cutting off militants inside the centre from their strongholds elsewhere in Anbar province and in neighbouring Syria.
Backed by airstrikes from the US-led coalition, the Iraqi army is attempting to reclaim Ramadi’s central government compound and the surrounding area, the only part of the city still held by Daesh.
Those remaining did not appear to be giving up easily. Military units crossed the Euphrates into the central districts using a bridge that was destroyed by the militants and repaired by army engineers. It also still controls the Iraqi cities of Falluja, east of Ramadi, and Mosul, in the north. “The numbers aren’t really high, I would say, but in that restricted terrain … it’s not very easy to maneuver through that terrain so it doesn’t take much in the way of defense capability … to hold them back”, Warren said.
A medical official confirmed causalities.
Sabah al-Noman, from Iraq’s elite counter-terrorism force, said after it had pushed into the centre of Ramadi that the city – 80 miles west of Baghdad – was expected to be cleared in 72 hours.
He also said there were at least thousands of civilians left inside Ramadi, “possibly tens of thousands”.
An Iraqi defence ministry spokesman said earlier that ISIL was preventing civilians from leaving Ramadi before the attack on the city. And they do this all in order to place blame and to discredit them.
Colonel Warren called the instructions in the leaflets “the behavior of thugs, behavior of killers, the behavior of terrorists”. He refused to provide any casualty estimates on the government side, but they reported facing sniper fire as well as suicide bombers.
As the military operation continues, Ramadi’s civilian population – estimated to be between 4,000 and 10,000 – remains mostly trapped inside the city.
Local forces have made gains against the militant group elsewhere in Iraq in recent months.
Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, later said Carter had bad information.
The US has offered “advisers” and attack helicopters for the battle, but Iraq refused.
Ramadi, he said, “is symbolically meaningful”, given that it was the birthplace of the 2006 Anbar Awakening in which Sunni tribes rose up against insurgent groups like Al Qaeda in Iraq – a movement that coincided with a US troop surge and that is considered a turning point of the Iraq War.
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The troops began their offensive Monday night on the edges of the city, and by midday Tuesday had advanced to its center, according to news reports from journalists on the ground.
