Iraqi forces engaged Islamic State fighters in Ramadi on Saturday (February 6) as the government troops continued efforts to clear out final remnants of Islamist insurgency in the city, military officials said.
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Security forces captured downtown Ramadi from ISIS group late past year, raising the Iraqi flag on the government complex there. And even in Ramadi, Iraqi forces are still working to secure that city and its environs.
In another development, an Iraqi commander said that 125 Iraqi civilians were evacuated from southern Ramadi after Daesh militants had imposed a siege.
The next major offensive to drive Islamic State militants from Iraq, the fight to recapture the city of Mosul, is at least a year away, a top military intelligence official testified Tuesday.
The Ministry of Interior said in a statement Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2016 that a road linking Ramadi to the capital Baghdad is also back under government control.
Some Iraqi forces remain tied down in Ramadi, where militants continue to mount small attacks, and won’t be able to be redeployed until most security responsibility in the city can be turned over to local police.
But Ramadi’s hundreds of thousands of residents will not be able to go home until bombs are removed and infrastructure damaged by six months of fighting is rehabilitated – operations that require tens of millions of dollars Baghdad can not spare.
Isis overran large areas of Iraq in June 2014, but security forces and allied tribesmen held out against the jihadists in parts of Ramadi as other areas of the country fell. The report coincided with a statement released by the U.S. Department of Defense saying the coalition conducted three strikes near Ramadi and seven near al-Baghdadi.
With the help of US-led air strikes and training, Iraqi forces have since regained significant areas from IS, but Mosul will be the most hard battle of the war against the jihadists.
Last December, most of the areas in Ramadi have been declared to be free from the presence of the extremist group. Ms Grande appealed to global donors to augment the $10 million fund allocated for that operation.
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“The level of destruction in Ramadi is as bad as anything we have seen anywhere in Iraq”, said Grande. IS mostly controlled a third of Iraq but was lessened when the U.S.-led coalition began in August of 2014.
