The United Nations refugee agency said a total of about 12,000 people had managed to flee since May 23, mostly from the outskirts of the city.
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After a week of shaping operations aimed at sealing the siege of Fallujah, which lies just 50km west of Baghdad, elite forces launched a new, more aggressive phase on Monday morning.
As the protests turned violent in December 2013, Sunni tribes brokered a withdrawal by Iraqi military and police’s withdrawal from Fallujah.
Following initial gains in the south of the city on Tuesday, Iraqi government forces faced a four-hour counter-attack by ISIS in the district of Nuaimiya, slowing the advance.
A senior UNHCR Public Information Officer in Baghdad Caroline Gluck said, “There is severe shortage of food and medicines in the city of Fallujah where some families search for food in the garbage”.
Mr.al-Abadi has vowed to eject the ISIS fighters in short order, but the militants have had two years to dig in and strengthen the city’s defenses with improvised explosives devices, sniper nests and a network of underground bunkers and tunnels, fortifications that in recent days have slowed the government advance.
Fallujah is one of only two major cities they still control in the country – the other being Mosul – and it looms large in modern jihadist mythology.
Iraqi soldiers are battling to drive the Islamic State out of Fallujah.
“[Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar] Abadi has tried to minimize the cost of civilian lives by deploying [counterterrorism forces], but ISIS is going to ensure as many civilians die as possible, and this will hurt him”, says Kirk Sowell, a political risk analyst specialized in Iraq.
The next US president will be the fifth in a row with troops fighting in Iraq.
“We [the United States] and others in the global community and the NGO community are prepared when civilians come out of Fallujah to provide them with the assistance that they need”, Pennington said.
The UN children’s fund has issued a stark warning to Iraqi troops and Islamic State militants to spare the children amid a battle to retake the city of Fallujah city. Iraqi forces backed by USA -led airstrikes and mainly Shiite militias launched an o. Since the operation began, the United Nations said it has received reports that about 500 men and boys have been detained for questioning because they were identified as suspected IS sympathizers. Only government forces and approved Sunni militiamen are receiving supportive airstrikes, which have totaled 48 around Fallujah in the last two weeks, he said.
In April, at least 741 Iraqis were killed and 1,374 wounded. There isn’t even a decent argument that the people of Fallujah, predominantly Sunni, would be better off governed by the Shiite al-Abadi government in Baghdad than by the Sunni IS – an argument used to justify overthrowing Saddam Hussein back in 2003.
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FILE – Iraqi counterterrorism forces face off with Islamic State militants on the southern edge of Fallujah, Iraq on Tuesday, May 31, 2016 a day after launching an operation of the militant-held city with the help of USA -led coalition airstrikes.
