Iraqi forces launch offensive to dislodge ISIL from centre of the capital of Anbar province, army spokesman says.
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“There’s still a long way to go”, Col. Warren said Tuesday. Around 300 Islamic State fighters are believed to be hunkered down in the northern reaches of the city.
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The effort to retake the city, located 100 kilometers west of the capital, Baghdad, has taken months with fighting on the outskirts and work to cut off militant supply lines running into Ramadi.
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ISIL bombed the bridges into Ramadi after overrunning the city in May, so Iraqi security forces troops entered the city by crossing the Euphrates river north of the city using “expedient bridging”.
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.
The offensive has been ongoing since Ramadi initially fell to the Islamic State, but since early December has gathered momentum.
The mostly Shiite Iraqi army is leading the invasion of Ramadi, a Sunni Muslim city.
Government forces, which have been supported by daily air strikes from the US-led coalition, had to move carefully through the devastated city, whose deserted streets were littered with rubble and shrapnel.
“Our forces are advancing towards the government complex in the centre of Ramadi”, the counter-terrorism spokesman, Mr Sabah al-Numani, said.
Those remaining did not appear to be giving up easily.
A source in the Iraqi military’s Anbar Operations Command told the BBC that engineers had built temporary bridges over the River Euphrates, which flows along the north and west of the city centre. Three medical officials confirmed the casualty figures.
“The city will be cleared in the coming 72 hours”, he said.
There are reportedly still thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of civilians inside Ramadi.
Islamic State also controls Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, and Falluja, which lies between Ramadi and Baghdad. “They do all this to discredit the I.S.F”. “It’s the behavior of thugs, it’s the behavior of killers and it’s the behavior of terrorists”.
There have been reports that IS has been rounding people up, possibly to use as human shields.
Iraqi forces were less than a half-mile away from the main government complex after advancing through four key areas of southern Ramadi, al-Nuaman said.
The militant group still controls Mosul, Iraq s second city. But it has lost several towns in recent months since the government in Baghdad and in the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq have begun to fight back.
A man named Ahmed, who has been fighting with Iraqi Special Operations Forces to retake parts of Ramadi from ISIS, told Vice News this week that he was tortured by a Shia militia unit.
Their presence would be too incendiary in the Sunni heartland of Ramadi and the surrounding province of Anbar, he adds.
The loss of Ramadi in mid-May had been Baghdad s worst defeat in the war against IS and its recapture would provide a welcome morale boost to the country s much-criticised military.
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The troops are working alongside Sunni tribal fighters and militiamen – against the Sunni extremists of Islamic State. He said the fight would “take some time”.
