Iraqi forces on Tuesday reported progress in the military operation to retake the city of Ramadi from the Islamic State group, saying they made the most significant incursion into the city since it fell to the militants in May.
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No deaths were reported, officials said Tuesday. “At the moment, we’re all kind of scratching our heads”. The Costco incident is the latest E. coli outbreak where the source is unknown.
“The city will be cleared in the coming 72 hours”.
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In a separate incident, at least eight civilians, including several children, were killed in a series of air strikes on a residential area north of Ramadi, the sources said.
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“We went into the center of Ramadi from different axes, and we started clearing residential areas”, General Sabah al-Numani, a spokesman for the army counterterrorism unit in charge of the offensive, said in a statement Tuesday.
ISIS seized Ramadi in May in an embarrassing defeat for Iraqi forces which raised questions from Defense Secretary Ashton Carter over whether Iraqis lacked the will to fight.
Iraqi soldiers advance in northern Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, on Monday, Dec. 21, 2015. The offensive to capture the city centre started at dawn, said Numani.
But Iraqi intelligence estimates the number of ISIS fighters entrenched in the centre of Ramadi, capital of Western Anbar province, stands between 250 and 300.
Last month, government forces completed their encirclement of the predominantly Sunni Arab city, about 90km west of Baghdad, cutting off militants inside the centre from their strongholds elsewhere in Anbar province and in neighbouring Syria. Iraqi officials described the assault as a fierce urban battle, with their forces facing vehicle bombs, sniper fire, and explosive traps.
The Iraqi forces had trained for the maneuver with the engineers of the 814th Multi-Role Bridging Company based at Fort Polk, Louisiana, Warren said.
If the operation to capture Ramadi succeeds, it will be the second major city after Tikrit to be retaken from ISIS in Iraq.
However, Iraqi forces have been heavily reliant on USA airstrikes as they slowly reclaim territory from the militants.
After beefing up their new positions, Iraqi military leaders had said a final push was imminent and leaflets urging the population to flee were dropped over the weekend.
According to another military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to talk to the press, 15 families had managed to escape from Hoz in the past 24 hours.
A victory in Ramadi would leave Mosul, Tal Afar and Fallujah as the only major Iraqi cities still in IS hands and further undermine the group s claim that the caliphate it proclaimed past year is expanding. Iraqi officials say they believe civilians will be able to get out but coalition officials report they have only witnessed small groups doing so.
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The coalition said its aircraft had carried out six strikes on Daesh targets in the Ramadi area on Tuesday. Warren estimated that thousands or even tens of thousands of civilians were still in the city; hundreds of thousands of others have fled.
