Iraq’s prime minister visited the city of Ramadi on Tuesday, a day after claiming its capture from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) after a months-long siege by the armed group. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said that after the city is recaptured, Iraqi forces will turn their attention to Mosul, the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Iraq.
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Iraqi troops have been fighting for months to retake key cities and towns in Anbar, Iraq’s largest province, from IS militants who had seized most of Anbar and tried to advance towards Baghdad.
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Gen. Ismail al-Mahlawi, head of the Anbar military operations, told The Associated Press that the advance was hampered by suicide bombers, snipers and booby traps. Iraqi security forces still need to flush out pockets of insurgents holed up in Ramadi and its surroundings.
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The Iraqi Joint Operations leadership announced the liberation of the city of Ramadi that was occupied by ISIS. Some troops were seen slaughtering sheep in celebration near heavily damaged buildings.
The U.S. military carried out at least 29 airstrikes between December 20 and Saturday in and around Ramadi, with more on Sunday, U.S. officials said.
Joining the rank of congratulating Iraq, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter on December 28 said defeating ISIL in Ramadi was a significant step in the combat against the jihadists. Beyond statements from the Iraqi government and from its media outlets, few have claimed the city is fully liberated. On Monday, Brigadier general Ahmed al-Belawi, the leader of a battalion of tribal fighters, said that the militants had stopped returning fire from inside the Ramadi government compound around 8am.
By Dec. 22, much of the eastern half of the city had been retaken by Iraqi forces.
“We didn’t expect them to retreat from a number of Ramadi areas today, where we entered without any resistance, as if they evaporated”, he said.Al-Belawi said the fighters retreated mainly to the eastern neighborhoods of Sijariya and Sufiya.
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Authorities have not provided casualty figures from the fighting or Ramadi. This victory in the Sunni-majority Ramadi will strip IS of one of its key locations as it represented a key transportation location for the group to move supplied from Baghdad to its stronghold in Syria.
