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IS puts up heavy fight to slow Iraqi troop advance on Ramadi
He said a major clearing effort was needed to allow forces to move in because IS rigged the entire area with roadside bombs and booby traps. Iraqi forces have been lower than a mile from the compound where about 100 militants are holding out, the authorities stated.
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With the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, Iraqi forces are continuing a coordinated attack on Ramadi, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) west of Baghdad and the capital of Anbar province.
Three days into the government assault, the militants are still entrenched in the center of Ramadi, around the provincial government complex.
According to medical sources in Baghdad, 93 members of the security forces were brought in with injuries on Sunday alone.
Brig Rasool said most civilians still in the ISIL-held central district had taken shelter in the city’s hospital, knowing that the army would not target it. We have killed many of them and our snipers have taken positions on the roofs of the houses of Ramadi.
“They are now engaged in fierce clashes with Daesh near the government complex”, he added, using an Arabic acronymn for Islamic State.
“A few days only, and we’ll liberate the whole city”, says one Iraq soldier. “They have built defenses including land mines and possibly tunnels… while ruling over hundreds of thousands of civilians who could be used as human shields”.
He had said on Saturday that more than 250 families had managed to escape the combat zones since the start of the operation and had been escorted to safety by the army.
“The government has announced that it does not want participation of any troops, except the Iraqi ones, in the liberation of Mosul”. Jihadist fighters concentrated their defence around the main government complex in the Hoz neighbourhood and now Iraqi forces are struggling to break in.
Ramadi, the capital of the Anbar province, was seized by IS militants in May after about a week of fighting with the governmental forces.
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IS has lost control of several key towns in Iraq to government and Kurdish forces since over-running large swathes of the country’s west and north in June 2014 and proclaiming the creation of a “caliphate” that also extended into neighbouring Syria. That defeat was Baghdad’s worst in the war against IS, and a victory now would provide a welcome boost to the much-criticized federal forces.