Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi posted a tweet in Arabic congratulating the people of Iraq on the “liberation of al-Karma” and ordered security forces to protect civilians there. We will only go in if the Iraqi forces are in absolute need of support in Falluja.
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“IS is using civilians as human shields to stop the troops’ advance, but the security forces took a package of measures aimed at isolating the residential areas to spare the lives of the civilians”, he added. He said Fallujah is now completely isolated. ISIS snipers were also preventing civilians from fleeing, Warren said.
“There is also the fear of being killed for attempting to flee”, Abdullah said, explaining that multiple families said IS is threatening residents with death if they attempt to flee.
Even as Abadi was claiming a highly successful first day for the Fallujah campaign, and Iraqi military commanders said they had encountered only “weak” resistance so far, ISIS was claiming to have repelled Iraqi attacks and destroyed some of their military hardware with suicide bombings.
It was unclear what kind of defense ISIS was prepared to put up in Fallujah, a city that looms large in modern extremist mythology since 2004 battles that saw US forces suffer some of their worst losses since campaigns during the Vietnam War.
The terror group has led a brutal and desperate crackdown on deserters after government forces launched a massive offensive on its Iraqi stronghold.
About 100,000 civilians are estimated to be in Fallujah which, in January 2014, became the first Iraqi city to be captured by Isil, six months before the group declared its caliphate.
Noting that one of the main goals of the military operation was “to minimize possible losses among the civilian population”, Jamal said that the active phase was preceded by surgical strikes on Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) positions by the Iraqi Air Force.
He said the US military would conduct airstrikes to support thousands of SDF fighters, some of whom have been trained and equipped by American forces.
Government troops and allied militias have now been fighting for months to reclaim key cities and towns in Anbar from IS militants, who attempted to advance towards Baghdad after seizing most of Anbar province.
“We’re very concerned about the fate of the civilians that remain in Fallujah as the military operations are undertaken”, United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.
“While we were walking out of our village, we were not sure that we would do it, because we know ISIS militants planted many IEDs in the roads”, he said.
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Any ground battle to liberate Fallujah will likely be long and bloody. The authorities have pledged to retake Mosul, the north’s biggest city, this year in keeping with a U.S. plan to oust Islamic State from their de facto capitals in Iraq and Syria. The group declared an Islamic caliphate in the territory it holds in Iraq and Syria and at the height of its power was estimated to hold almost a third of each country. Iraqi forces have already started assembling in the area and have begun preliminary operations to expel militants from the city, though any final assault is still months away.
