“We are coming to liberate Mosul and it will be the fatal and final blow to Daesh”, he stressed.
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“Ultimately, for Sunni residents to come back, they need to feel that there is a force there that will protect their interests”.
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Video of Ramadi’s city center and other nearby districts showed widespread destruction, and many neighborhoods appeared to be in ruins. Shortly after his announcement, the head of military operations in Anbar clarified that government forces had retaken only a strategic government complex.
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Announcing the victory Brigadier General Yahya Rasool said: “Yes, the city of Ramadi has been liberated”.
In a significant development in the war against militant group Islamic State, Iraqi forces have retaken control of Ramadi from ISIS with the USA also hailing their victory. It is unclear how many Iraqi forces and civilians have been killed in the battles, which involved fending off the militant group’s waves of suicide bombers. The capital of the mainly Sunni Muslim Anbar province, Ramadi was the scene of bitter sectarian violence following the US-led invasion in 2003.
Iraq’s future depends on building a truly competent military that is representative of the nation’s ethnic and religious mix, and on Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi fulfilling his pledge to protect the nation’s Sunni minority.
Rebuilding Ramadi, if it can be fully secured by the government, will be no easy task.
ISIS had an estimated force of about 400 fighters to defend central Ramadi a week ago.
According to a U.S. summary of operations, coalition aircraft working with Iraqi forces struck several positions in the Ramadi area on Monday, including a “staging area” for Islamic State vehicle bombs. “The prestige goes to the Iraqi military”, said political analyst Ihsan Al-Shammari.
Congratulating the Iraqi government, US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said: “The expulsion of ISIL by Iraqi security forces…is a significant step forward in the campaign to defeat this barbaric group”.
Cautionary tale Michael O’Hanlon, director of research for the foreign policy programme at the Brookings Institution, said the recapture of Ramadi was good news but that it also offered a cautionary tale for what lay ahead in the fight to defeat Islamic State.
Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province, was seized by the militant organization in May.
It is the first major success for the U.S.-trained force that fled in the face of the jihadist Islamic State militants’ surge through northern and western Iraq in June 2014.
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“The Iraqi security forces, including the counterterrorism service, the Iraqi army, the Iraqi air force, the federal and local police and the tribal fighters, have demonstrated their resolve in the fight for Ramadi”, said U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the CJTF-OIR commander.
