Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Monday that Islamic State would be defeated in 2016 with the army planning to move on Mosul. Troops must still clear bombs from the streets and buildings left by the militants and occasionally encounter Islamic State snipers and fighters on the outskirts of the city.
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Iraqi state TV was replaying Monday’s footage from Ramadi, showing troops, some waving Iraqi flags and others brandishing machine guns, chanting and dancing inside what it described as the government complex in central Ramadi.
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General Sami al-Aardi, an Iraqi counterterrorism military officer, told Anadolu Agency that al-Abadi visited Ramadi to review the security operations in the city.
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Mosul, 400 kilometers north of Baghdad, has been designated by the government as the next target for Iraq’s armed forces after they retook the western city of Ramadi. But an Iraqi military commander, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, said army units were operating in Nuaimiya, a neighborhood in southern Fallujah, and a nearby village, Zidan.
McCraw and other coalition officials declined to estimate how long it would take Iraqi forces to clear the rest of the areas.
Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the head of the U.S. Central Command, congratulated Iraqi forces on the “important operational achievement”.
Warren said 10 Islamic State leaders had been killed in recent airstrikes, and he portrayed the gains in Ramadi as the latest in a string of successes that have put the militants on the defensive.
“It’s there where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his caliphate”, he said, referring to the group’s leader.
“This organization is losing its leadership”, he said.
“Our life was hell under ISIS”, he said.
Among those kidnapped are members of the Qatari royal family.
“What we saw in terms of the combination of airstrikes and intelligence support and then forces on the ground, it has worked very, very well”, he said. USA military officials had warned that fighters might escape by posing as civilians.
“The only US involvement in the fight for Ramadi has been the delivery of air power and the training of Iraqi soldiers and advising and assisting the Iraqi Security Forces from their headquarters”, he said. “My biggest happiness will be when they liberate my city”.
Security sources said insurgents clashed with federal police and tribal fighters on Wednesday in Husaiba al-Sharqiya and Jweba, on the eastern fringes of Ramadi.
Al-Abadi and other Iraqi authorities also have to ensure the safety of Sunni residents who fled the fighting and may now return home.
“This approach has a very high cost in material damage and human casualties”, said Lina Khatib, a senior research associate at the Arab Reform Initiative, a Paris-based think tank.
Rebuilding Ramadi, if it can be fully secured by the government, also will be no easy task. Al Muslawi fled Mosul before the Islamic State consolidated its grip in that city. “The people who can do that are limited in number”. Distrust of the Shiite-led government runs deep in the sprawling Anbar province, which is overwhelmingly Sunni.
Al-Belawi insisted that the Sunni fighters had returned and allied with his forces, helping them to advance.
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“There were no Shia militias involved in this operation for Ramadi”, Warren said.
