Iraqi Major General Ismail al-Mahlawi, the head of military operations in the western Anbar province, said yesterday that the lock was the last remaining bridge from the city center to the northwest.
Advertisement
Iraqi forces on Wednesday consolidated newly gained positions in Ramadi, after achieving a breakthrough in their fight against Daesh (the so-called IS) group by retaking a large part of the city.
In his testimony to the Senate Committee on Armed Services today, Carter appeared to be willing to commit quite a bit of support to Iraq in its recent offensive to retake the key ISIS bastion of Ramadi, which sits just under 100 miles away from the capital of Baghdad.
Crucial to the Joint Chiefs Vice chairman was a potential confrontation with Russian forces should they opt to challenge the no-fly zone, or a “direct conflict” with the Syrian army.
“The liberation of Al-Tameem was very important and… enables other forces to advance toward the centre of the city of Ramadi”, said Sabah al-Noman, the spokesman for Iraq’s counter-terrorism forces. “We will do more of what works going forward”.
The United States has aided troops with air strikes against the terrorists, and Obama is considering sending attack helicopters to aid fighters against the terrorists on the ground.
Some 3,500 troops in six locations support the Iraqi security forces with increased lethal fire and are augmenting the training, advising and assisting program, Carter told the senators.
US Secretary of Defence Ash Carter has called on coalition allies against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to send special operations forces to bolster fight against the armed group. “We want to know what the plan is”. Mosul remains firmly in the hands of Islamic State militants.
Islamic State fighters in Ramadi are estimated to number 600 to 1,000, defense officials said.
Under fire from Republican lawmakers Wednesday, Carter defended the U.S. strategy against IS in both Iraq and Syria which has been based on a campaign of targeted airstrikes, recently boosted with U.S. Special Forces on the ground. “So in the end, while we can enable them, we cannot substitute for them”, Carter said. That’s a strategy that the United States moved decisively toward in October, when it announced it would send dozens of special operations forces to Syria to coordinate with rebels.
But he said that in the long term, the US would be faced with the problem of securing and governing the territory retaken – something that needs to be done by local forces.
Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said deploying a significant force of USA troops to the region would be counterproductive.
Advertisement
The spokesman said USA airstrikes also killed Abu Maryam, an IS “enforcer and senior leader of their extortion network”, and Abu Rahman al-Tunisi, described as an IS executive officer who coordinated the transfer of information, people and weapons.
