Vehicles of Iraqi security forces are seen as they advance towards the center of Ramadi city, Iraq December 24, 2015.
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Progress through the building has been cautious, however, because of the necessity of sweeping for booby-traps in each area.
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On Friday, the Department of National Defence confirmed that, over the last 48 hours, intensified airstrikes by Canada’s CF-18 fighter jets have helped destroy ISIS fighting positions near three key cities, including Mosul, which was captured by the terror group a year ago.
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The presence of Iraqi forces around Ramadi is “like a boa constrictor, a squeezing of ISIL out of that city”, Warren said, using another name for ISIS.
Government forces, which have been supported by daily air strikes from the US-led coalition, had to move carefully through the devastated city, whose deserted streets were littered with rubble and shrapnel. It isn’t clear what number of civilians are left within the area. The Iraqi army has been trying to retake the city, which located in the Anbar province in the fertile Euphrates River valley, ever since.
Also on Saturday, Iraqi forces seized full control of Ramadi’s northern neighborhood of Zawiyah.
The area is home to the former government complex, the recapture of which would provide a boost to the hopes of fully recapturing Ramadi.
Iraqi forces have totally encircled the government complex in Ramadi, the last stronghold of Islamic State militants in the western city, and are about to enter it, joint operations command spokesman Yahya Rasool says.
Ramadi was ISIS’s biggest prize of 2015, abandoned by government forces in May in a major setback for Baghdad and for the Iraqi troops that have been trained mostly by the US since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
The U.S. also quietly changed its rules of engagement for those operations, from aiming for a “zero” risk of civilian casualties to the risk of no more than five civilians being killed, according to a U.S. defense official.
The slow pace of the Ramadi operation had triggered calls from some critics for a greater role for the Shiite-dominated Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary forces or even U.S. troops on the ground.
“The liberation of dear Mosul will be achieved with the cooperation and unity of all Iraqis after the victory in Ramadi”, Mr Abadi said in a statement released through the state media website.
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The loss of Ramadi in mid-May had been one of Baghdad’s most stinging defeats in the war against IS fighters, who took over large parts of the country in June 2014 and subsequently proclaimed a “caliphate” straddling Iraq and Syria.
