“There is still some fighting to be done” before Iraqi forces recapture all of the city, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said, adding that the U.S. military supported the Iraqi forces with advice and air support, according to Fox News.
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Iraqi forces expressed their plans for continuing the offensive against the Islamic State after reclaiming the city of Fallujah on Friday.
Islamic State fighters and Special Forces are intensely clashing near a hospital at the center of the city. Iraqi forces together with the USA -led coalition have been carrying out operations in the area for weeks.
In a televised address Friday, Abadi said that some “pockets” of resistance remained in the city, about 45 miles west of Baghdad, but that it was largely under the control of security forces.
Iraqi special forces swept into Fallujah on Friday, recapturing most of the city after weeks of fighting on its outskirts. He said 1,000 militants were killed in the operation to retake the city. The re-occupation of Fallujah comes at the price of concern over torture tactics employed by both the ISIS – members of which have been trying to flee along with residents of Fallujah – and the Shia forces whose treatment of people has moved Sunni politicians to plead to the Prime Minister for a look into the matter.
Throughout the country, more than 3.3 million people have fled their homes, compounding an existing refugee problem: Iraq is already host to around 300,000 Syrian refugees who have escaped from the war there. We wanted to flee, but they hemmed us in.
The group still controls Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, in the north.
“We implore the Iraqi government to take charge of this humanitarian disaster unfolding on our watch”, NRC’s Iraq director Nasr Muflahi said.
Special forces officers radioed to alert the joint command center, which notified the federal police forces that were gathered there, but the Humvee exploded. They said no civilians were in the hospital when they reached it. But by evening, the special forces commander Brig.
The number of displaced people surpassed 68,000, according to the United Nations, which recently estimated Falluja’s population at 90,000, only about a third of the total in 2010.
Abadi ignored USA advice to focus on Mosul last month when he declared the launch of the Fallujah operation, but he vowed on Friday that the liberation of the northern city was “very near”.
“When we started running they came after us, ISIL militants were shooting at us with guns from behind but we had decided we would rather die on the road with pride then in the hands of ISIL”, the woman, who did not give a name, said.
However, a video shot by U.S. drones flying over Fallujah in the past few days has shown Daesh fighters donning civilian clothing and burning their weapons with the aim of escaping along with the thousands of civilians fleeing the city. Aid groups said most were arriving at the camps in shock, after walking for hours through scorching heat without food or water. Hopefully, large areas of the city have not been levelled.
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This marks the most recent in a string of territorial victories for the Iraqi security forces, which recently retook the city of Ramadi in January, after “months of battling” IS fighters.
