Ramadi fell to the Islamic State group in May, marking a major setback for Iraqi forces and the US-led campaign.
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However, Sunni fighters from Anbar tribes opposed to the jihadists also officially belong to the group, which is nominally under Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s command.
U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for a U.S.-led coalition backing Iraqi forces, said in a statement: “The clearance of the government center is a significant accomplishment and is the result of many months of hard work”. A U.S. military spokesperson said that the success today was a proud moment for all Iraqi forces.
Reacting to the news, Iraqis celebrated on the streets of several cities and officials congratulated the federal forces on their biggest victory since ISIS overran large parts of the country.
Over the a year ago, the coalition has carried out numerous airstrikes against Daesh targets in both Iraq and Syria, forcing the militant group to withdraw from a number of areas it had previously captured.
State TV on Monday showed pictures of soldiers in Ramadi firing their guns in the air and publicly slaughtering a sheep in celebration.
Brig Gen Majid al-Fatlawi, of the army’s 8th division, told AFP that IS fighters had “planted more than 300 explosive devices on the roads and in the buildings of the government complex”. It is imperative to state that the ISIS group still controls much of northern and Western Iraq.
After encircling the provincial capital for weeks, Iraqi forces launched an assault to retake it last week and made a final push to seize the central administration complex on Sunday.
The militias were held back from the battlefield in Ramadi this time to avoid antagonising the mainly Sunni population. USA troops fought their bloodiest battles in Ramadi and nearby Fallujah, which was the first Iraqi city to fall to IS and remains under its control.
Authorities have not provided casualty figures from the fighting or Ramadi. Many residents initially welcomed IS as liberators.
Pockets of fighters for IS – also known as Isis, Isil and Daesh – remain dug in in other sectors, however. They swept through northern and western Iraq in June 2014 and declared a “caliphate” to rule over all Muslims from territory in both Iraq and Syria, carrying out mass killings and imposing a draconian form of Sunni Islam.
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Even before IS rolled in, Ramadi bore scars from the eight-year US intervention in Iraq. Even if Iraq drives the extremists out, they would retain their grip on large parts of Syria, where an increasingly complex civil war has sucked in regional powers and left the US with few reliable allies. Warren back then said that once the city is taken back, security will be assured by Sunni tribal fighters as well as the Anbar police – the local force that has been trained by Italian Carabinieri coalition partners.
