The Iraqi army has begun an operation to storm Fallujah, the Islamic State group’s stronghold, in a final showdown to retake the city.
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In recent days, Iranian media published pictures of what they said was a visit by Soleimani to Falluja and a meeting he held with the leaders of the Iraqi coalition of Shi’ite militias known as Popular Mobilization, or Hashid Shaabi.
Iraqi forces retook the village of Nuaimiya, just south of Falluja, closing in on the city itself, al-Iraqi TV reported.
In Iraq, only a few hundred families managed to slip out of the Fallujah area, with an estimated 50,000 people still trapped inside the city proper.
CTS spokesman Sabah al-Noman told AFP: “We started early this morning our operations to break into Fallujah”.
The Islamic State, meanwhile, launched fresh suicide attacks on Baghdad.
The U.S. backed Kurdish offensive is meant to pave the way for a larger operation that aims to recapture Mosul and defeat the Islamic State in Iraq.
Al Jazeera’s Omar al-Saleh, reporting from Erbil in northern Iraq, described the situation in the city as dire.
Mayor Issa al-Issawi, speaking from outside the city, said that civilians had begun to move from southern areas of Fallujah toward the north, and may be used by militants as human shields.
It is one of the last two major cities still held by the jihadists in Iraq, the other being Mosul, in the north.
A fresh wave of bomb attacks claimed by ISIS struck the Baghdad area on Monday, killing 11 people in three separate blasts.
Northeast of Baghdad on Sunday, police said a suicide bomber killed at least seven people and wounded 22 when he blew himself up in a cafe in Moqdadiyah, in an attack claimed by ISIL.
For more on the effect of the fighting on civilians in Fallujah, CCTV America’s Elaine Reyes Spoke to Phil Gurski, who worked as a strategic analyst in the Canadian intelligence community for over 30 years. Along with another bomb planted in a vehicle, they killed more than 20 people and injured more than 50 in three districts of Baghdad, police and medical sources said. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said, during a televised speech to parliament, that the “current second phase of the Fallujah operation” will last less than 48 hours.
One Fallujah resident said by phone that there is lack of medicine and fuel in the city.
“The Iraqi special forces and special operations are entering the city and clearing it block by block and then handing the cleared areas over to the Iraqi police, army and volunteers”, he said, speaking through a translator.
As ISIS finds itself under increasing pressure in its territories, it has been lashing out with an increasing number of attacks on civilians in Iraqi and Syrian cities.
It would be the third major city in Iraq recaptured by the government after Saddam’s home town Tikrit and Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s vast western Anbar province.
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And in Baghdad’s eastern Sadr City district, a bomb motorcycle went off at a market, leaving three people dead.
