News of the mission in Ramadi came after it was revealed another SAS sniper stopped a group of jihadis launching a suicide bomb attack by killing the terrorists with just three bullets in a dramatic shoot-out in an ISIS-held part of Iraq.
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Sabah Karhot, the head of Anbar’s provincial council, said as much as 80 percent of Ramadi has been destroyed in the battles. According to posts on the SITE Intelligence Group’s website, the militants – also known as ISIS or ISIL – also claimed they had taken over about 20 army barracks and posted photos online of their fighters standing in the city’s main government complex. Ramadi is the capital of Anbar province with a predominantly Sunni population which has been traditional stronghold of IS ideology and probably was the most significant Iraqi city under IS control, after IS capital Raqqa which falls in Syria.
However, both were deemed too unsafe to civilians as a number of innocent people were being used as human shields around the property.
“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.
They said: “The armour-piercing rounds had a devastating effect”.
Iraqi pro-government forces drive a military vehicle as they try to secure all the neighborhoods of Ramadi, Iraq, on Sunday. Meanwhile, the U.S. army said Friday that the US-led coalition carried out 24 air raids against IS in Iraq Thursday.
It said it targeted “trainers from the rejectionist army”, a term used by the insurgents. The government forces suffered no deaths or injuries. Islamic State fighters are Sunnis.
Still, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi visited the bombed-out city this week, raising the Iraqi flag and declaring that 2016 “will be the year we drive ISIS out of Iraq”. They decided to make a run for it. More than 52 families had been rescued so far in the city, he said.
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“If we can prove that a civilian had a brother fighting with Daesh and he helped him with information or something similar, then we keep him with us” before turning them over to the judiciary on terrorism charges, he said. ISIS leaders are anxious – and rightly so – that the world is approaching an inevitable victory against them.
