Iraqi officials say the militias, including ones backed by Shi’ite power Iran, may be restricted to operating outside the city limits, as they largely did in the successful battle to retake the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi six months ago, to avoid aggravating sectarian tensions with Sunni residents.
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No casualties were reported by the army or Fallujah’s main hospital.
“Families who have been suffering food and medical shortages over the last months now risk being caught in the crossfire and it is absolutely vital that they are granted safe routes out of there so that we can assist them”, NRC country director Nasr Muflahi said in a statement. Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said the coalition has struck 21 targets in Fallujah since May 17.
Local Sunni tribes and a coalition of mostly Shi’ite militias are supporting the army in the battle against Islamic States, whose forces in the city number between 500 and 700, according to a USA military estimate.
The U.S. -led coalition said it conducted two strikes near Fallujah, targeting Islamic State’s weapons facilities and destroying bunkers and tunnel entrances.
“Federal forces advanced towards the east of Fallujah early today from three directions”, police Lieutenant General Raed Shakir Jawdat told AFP.
However, the Islamist militants still control large patches of Iraq’s north and west, including the second largest city of Mosul, which Iraqi authorities have pledged to retake this year.
There are reports of Iranian-backed Shiite militias – whose forces are located on the outskirts of town – participating in the Fallujah operation, but Col. Steve Warren said the USA military will not support those forces.
Fallujah is one of two main cities in the mainly Sunni al-Anbar province, which stretches west from Baghdad to the Syrian and Jordanian borders.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced Sunday that the push to retake Fallujah has begun.
Fallujah was the first of several cities in Iraq to fall to ISIS in 2014.
According to a local security source, Iraqi forces early Monday captured 12 districts of Fallujah, considered IS’s primary stronghold in Anbar province.
Fallujah is not new to tragedy, as it famously saw the worst of the fighting in Iraq during the American occupation years of the last decade.
Late Saturday, an Islamic State spokesman urged sympathizers in Europe and the U.S.to launch attacks on civilians there if they are unable to travel to the group’s self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq.
The Iraqi army, police and militias have had the city surrounded since late past year, while IS fighters have prevented numerous city’s residents from leaving.
Video showed a family standing in the daylight outside a simple one-story home, cheering and waving a white flag as a military convoy passed by.
It is estimated that around 75,000 people remain in Fallujah, compared to a pre-war population of around 300,000.
“We do think they can do it”, said Col. Steve Warren, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the USA military, confirming that the coalition will provide air support.
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The offensive follows a series of territorial gains over IS in western Iraq, but it still could delay plans to win back the second-largest city of Mosul, the focus of the USA plan to defeat the militants in Iraq and neighboring Syria.
