Garver said the USA military was aware of reports by the United Nations and humanitarian groups that civilians from mostly-Sunni Fallujah were being abused and in some cases executed by the Shia Popular Mobilization Units that joined with the Iraqi Security Forces in the campaign to retake Fallujah.
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A security source told Xinhua that the troops made a new progress in the morning when dozens of Humvees and armored vehicles entered part of al-Shuhada district in southern Fallujah, some 50 km west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, amid fierce clashes with IS militants and air strikes of USA -led coalition aircraft.
In the battle for Fallujah, both forces are participating in the operation to retake the city, about 40 miles west of Baghdad.
The operation to retake Fallujah is expected to be one of the most hard yet – the city is symbolically important to the militant group and has always been a bastion of support for anti-government militants since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
A Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) fighter stands near a woman looking out a doorway in a village, on the outskirts of Manbij city, after they took control of it from Islamic State forces, Aleppo province, Syria June 8, 2016. “But the operation is just getting into the really tough fighting phase. and we would expect that any real result of that is going to come within the coming weeks”.
Hussein said in a press release that “there are extremely distressing, credible reports that some people who survive the terrifying experience of escaping from ISIL, then face severe physical abuse once they reach the other side”.
The United Nations said on Wednesday as many as 90,000 civilians could be trapped inside Falluja, almost doubling its earlier estimate.
The force of elite troops started a house-to-house operation in the Shuhada suburb.
“Such ugly acts will only motivate the Iraqi troops to fight terrorists with added strength” and wrest control of the city from Takfiri terrorists, he said. The Nuaimiya neighborhood in the south of the city has also been liberated.
“It was an order”, Taleb Farhan, a resident of Karma on the outskirts of Falluja, said.
‘We have underestimated how many civilians are in Fallujah, ‘ Grande said.
Al-Abadi was joined by Lt. Gen. Abdel Wahab al-Saadi, the counterterrorism commander of the Fallujah operation.
Daesh is resorting to more weird tactics as the Iraqi army is tightening the noose around the group in Fallujah.
Iraqi forces have already faced stiff resistance in the fight for Fallujah.
Despite the number of militants in Fallujah, the terrorist group has “stiffly resisted” the Iraqi attack with roadside bombs, snipers and rockets, he said.
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Fallujah, a long-time stronghold of Sunni Muslim jihadis, was the first city to fall to the warmongering extremists.
