If Ramadi is captured, it will be the second major city after Tikrit to be retaken from Islamic State in Iraq.
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Ramadi has strategic importance, because Anbar is the heartland of Iraq’s Sunni Muslim population and because the city is close to Baghdad.
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“The anti-terrorism troops are now poised to break into the Hoz area where the governmental compound is located”, a brigadier general in the force told AFP.
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The Baghdad government has said it also wanted to spare civilians and give them the opportunity to leave the city.
“They were in a state of panic”, Karboly said.
“The end is coming”.
Noting the authenticity of the documents, Warren said: “The fighters in this order are directed to film their actions, distribute the videos, and to do all this in order to discredit both the ISF and the government of Iraq”.
He also said there were at least thousands of civilians left inside Ramadi, “possibly tens of thousands”.
Retreating IS fighters usually booby-trap their abandoned positions, plant roadside bombs and move in tunnels which can also be trapped with huge explosive charges.
Iraqi security forces cross a bridge built by corps of engineers over the Euphrates in Ramadi, December 22, 2015. Around 300 Islamic State fighters are believed to be hunkered down in the northern reaches of the city.
There has been no major push into the centre overnight, said an officer on the ground who asked not to be identified.
No-one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, though they bore the hallmarks of IS.
Tuesday’s assault saw rapid initial gains as Iraqi counterterrorism forces and 8th Army Division pushed into the city center from the south and west.
“This has been a grinding battle of attrition”.
Ismail said in a brief statement “A force belonging to the Rapid Intervention Forces had managed to kill 17 ISIS elements and detonate 12 explosive devices in eastern Hasiba in Anbar”, noting that, “The Karrar Rockets Battalion was able to destroy 17 shelters and a vehicle that was carrying a mono-gun in the same area”. “The city has been isolated for a while”, said David Witty, a retired U.S. army special forces colonel and former advisor to CTS.
Ramadi, he said, “is symbolically meaningful”, given that it was the birthplace of the 2006 Anbar Awakening in which Sunni tribes rose up against insurgent groups like Al Qaeda in Iraq – a movement that coincided with a USA troop surge and that is considered a turning point of the Iraq War. Gen. Ahmed al-Belawi, head of the province’s local police force.
Ramadi fell to the Islamic State in May, in a sudden collapse after a long battle that exposed multiple weaknesses in the government’s ability to fight the militants, including stark military shortfalls and disorganization, and an unwillingness by the government to arm or send reinforcements to help Sunni tribesmen who were fighting the militants.
“The United States is willing to do more in association to support the Iraqi security forces in that mission”, said Carter. The Islamic State has declared a self-styled caliphate on the territory under its control.
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IS has lost control of several key towns in Iraq to government and Kurdish forces since over-running large swathes of the country’s west and north in June 2014.
