“We haven’t seen ISIL mass enough combat power to move Iraq off their positions”, Warren added, using an alternative acronym for the Islamic State group.
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Iraqi forces retook the centre of the western city of Ramadi last week, a victory that could help boost Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi, who has been rebuilding the military after stunning defeats in the face of IS.
This comes days after Iraqi troops drove the militant group out of the city center.
Ramadi, the provincial capital of the sprawling Anbar province, fell to ISIS in May, marking a major setback for US-backed Iraqi forces.
United States commanders warn that the liberation of Mosul will be much more challenging and that supply lines leading into the city need to be cut off first.
Located between Ramadi and Baghdad, Fallujah is a significant Sunni city in its own right, and one with a considerable history of support for Islamist factions, centering around the United States destruction of the city during the occupation.
A commando of fighters equipped with rifles and suicide vests snuck into Speicher base, near the city of Tikrit, in the middle of the night.
The black and white video accompanied by intense classical music shows trucks within the crosshairs of Iraqi air force planes, before missiles create explosions that blot out the screen.
“The road to Mosul is going to be long and hard”, he told CNN.
Sitting in a tented camp in Habbaniyah where the army took most of the evacuated families, one woman recounted her family’s survival.
“Where you had Sunnis nearly exclusively in Ramadi, you’ve got an interesting mix of Sunnis, some Shia, a lot of Kurds, Some Chaldeans and Syrians; a bunch of different sects and tribes in the northern provinces”.
The attack is the biggest launched by IS against Iraqi forces since Ramadi’s recapture.
“That’s going to take some time”.
“Once our forces clear the city from IEDs we will certainly discover more mass graves”, he said.
Optimism of the cautious variety, however.
The Iraqi government said a week ago that it had “liberated” Ramadi from IS.
“We refused; we stayed in our houses and the word reached us that the Iraqi forces were coming”, she said, refusing to give her name.
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CNN’s Nima Elbagir reported from Baghdad, and Pat St. Claire wrote in Atlanta.
