Iraqi forces, backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, pushed into Ramadi earlier this week, capturing a military complex north of the city and a neighborhood on its outskirts.
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“In the last 24 hours, [the Iraqi forces] re-took the Anbar operations center on the northern bank of the Euphrates River across from Ramadi’s city center”, he said.
But when it comes to Raqqa, Gen. Selva said: “The forces that we are aware of at this point are the Syrian democratic forces that are working with Kurdish partners that are willing to put pressure on Raqqa”. It wasn’t immediately clear if there were any Iraqi casualties.
Ramadi is smack bang in the middle of Iraq.
Now that victory is within sight, US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter is offering US helicopter gunships to finish Daesh off in Ramadi.
Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, later said Carter had bad information.
At the current pace, he said, US commanders estimate that the Islamic State will still control Mosul in Iraq at the end of next year.
The U.S. has 3,500 troops in Iraq in six different locations in support of Iraqi Security forces, Carter said.
But even as Carter and Selva highlighted progress made against the terrorist group, Selva said that 40 percent of US war planes return each day without having struck targets in Iraq or Syria.
Starting last month, Iraqi forces began dropping leaflets on Ramadi urging people to leave ahead of a promised military offensive.
But leaving isn’t necessarily easy.
The advance was hailed as a significant step in efforts to retake Ramadi, a key ISIS hub 100km west of Baghdad, and fragment the jihadists’ self-proclaimed “caliphate”. Those caught trying to flee are detained and the head of the family risks being executed as a warning to others, according to Reuters.
“It’s a matter of time [before we] liberate Ramadi from the remnants of Daesh [IS], their crimes, and the IEDs which they planted in the houses and streets”, Abadi said.
Getting people out will be more hard. “The government is not proving us any guarantees that we will be safe during our trip south”.
The Iraqis use of combined arms operations – two or more types of units conducting simultaneous missions – against the Islamic State group is “a significant milestone in what we’re doing here”.
“They’re holding civilians as hostages, and as human shields, and so we want to do this in a very careful and deliberate way”, he said. “We believe now is the time for the final push into Ramadi”.
Iraqi forces claim they’re already making ground is recapturing Ramadi. It said the forces have been operating in the region at the request of Iraq’s government.
Iraqi forces had been planning the attack for over a month.
In Iraq, there are also setbacks.
Pentagon officials attributed the recent Iraqi successes in Ramadi to new equipment provided by the United States and a shift in training to emphasize combat engineering rather than counterinsurgency.
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This means the Islamic State’s bureaucracy has plenty of energy to power its various broadcast and social media dispatches to recruit more fighters and inspire attacks aboard, such as in Europe and the United States.
