Following the announcement, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi hailed the victory, and pledged to end his country’s battle with the IS group, also known as Daesh, in the coming year. In his address on the nation Abadi congratulated the Iraqi people for the recapture of Ramadi some 110 km west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and said that “every Iraqi city will come back to our homeland”.
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Fighters brandishing rifles danced in the Anbar provincial capital as top commanders paraded through the streets after recapturing the city lost to IS in May. “Peshmerga is a major force; you can not do Mosul without Peshmerga”, he insisted.
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The gunman was believed to be a 29-year-old Israeli Arab from the north of the country, identified as an Islamist sympathiser. The spokesman said: “All possible angles are being investigated – Large-scale police forces are conducting searches for him”.
During the televised address soldiers were shown firing their guns into the air and publicly slaughtering a sheep in celebration.
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ISIS fighters put up a tough fight in Ramadi, slowing down the advance of Iraqi forces after their initial push across the Euphrates River.
“Most of these fighters fought al-Qaida in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, they know their areas very well and the whereabouts of the local Daesh fighters and their movements”, he said, using an Arabic acronym for IS. A United States military commander had confirmed earlier that the raqi forces were poised to re ake the government complex before the close of the day on Monday.
American officials said the US-led coalition backing Iraqi forces had carried out more than 630 air strikes in the area over the past six months and provided training and equipment. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.
He said: “2016 will be the year of the big and final victory, when Daesh’s presence in Iraq will be terminated”.
Iraqi troops and counterterror squads on Sunday wrested the main government complex in Ramadi from IS control, where the militants had held an operational stronghold for seven months.
Iraq has plunged into a security vacuum since June 2014 when Daesh stormed Mosul and declared what it called a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
The city has suffered “huge devastation”, Al-Belawi said. The capture of Ramadi would be a major victory for Iraqi troops, but would also test the government’s ability to bridge the country’s sectarian divide.
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The most powerful groups in the Hashed al-Shaabi played only a peripheral role in the Ramadi battle, as Abadi and the US-led coalition wanted federal forces to regain confidence by spearheading the operation.
