Iraqi security forces on Monday declared victory over the IS militant group in Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s western province of Anbar, Xinhua reported.
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Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi vowed on Monday (Dec 28) to free the whole country from the Islamic State group in 2016, speaking after security forces retook the city of Ramadi from the jihadists.
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As significant – and symbolic – as the action was, Iraqi military officials said Islamic State fighters were still holed up in various pockets of the city. “2016 will be the year of the big and final victory, when [ISIL’s] presence in Iraq will be terminated”, Abadi said in a speech.
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“We are coming to liberate Mosul, which will be the fatal blow to Daesh”, he said.
“In the main area of ISIS’s control this year – which is to say the parts of Iraq and Syria that they call their caliphate – they have lost some towns and some smaller cities, mainly on the edges of their territory”. Ramadi is the capital of the strategic Anbar Province. In previous battles since then, Iraq’s armed forces operated mainly in a supporting role beside Iranian-backed Shiah militias.
Soldiers were shown on state television on Monday publicly slaughtering a sheep in an act of celebration.
Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters the capture of Ramadi was “a done deal” but said the government had to do more to rebuild the city and encourage displaced people to return.
Brig. Gen. Ahmed al-Belawi said “heavy and concentrated airstrikes” by the U.S.-led coalition killed IS fighters, destroyed their vehicles and blew up suicide auto bombs before they could be deployed, allowing his forces to advance into the city.
The recapture of the Sunni city seven months after it was overrun by jihadists was accomplished by Iraqi army forces reconstituted and retrained with US assistance, and backed by American and coalition air power. And US military officials are cautioning that the battle may not yet be won. Many of its majority-Sunni residents fled the ISIS occupation and the fighting.
“Most of these fighters fought al-Qaida in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, they know their areas very well and the whereabouts of the local Daesh fighters and their movements”, he said, using an Arabic acronym for IS.
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Describing the fight to push ISIS out of Iraq, Alice notes that Iraq’s security forces are trying to seize momentum and take the fight to ISIS strongholds in Fallujah and Mosul. Anbar, including Ramadi, was a major focus of that campaign at the height of the 2003-2011 United States war in Iraq.
