Baghdad-based US Colonel Steve Warren said that over the last four days, 20 strikes in the city had destroyed ISIL fighting positions and gun emplacements.
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Tens of thousands of civilians have been told by Iraq’s government to flee the city, which has been under IS control since 2014. The city has been under ISIS control since January 2014, and residents are said to be fearful of what happens when the overwhelmingly Shi’ite force invades the nearly exclusively Sunni city.
Remaining residents say any civilian caught trying to escape the city or hanging a white flag as advised by the military to protect themselves during airstrikes are doing so under the threat of death.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joe Dunford, the top US general, told VOA and two other reporters last week that the Iraqis are trying to mitigate the risk of attacks from Fallujah into Baghdad, which is less than 70 kilometers away.
51 of the families came to Amiriyat Al Fallujah from Al Sajer, Karma and were evacuated and transported by Iraqi forces, via Baghdad.
“The Iraqi government has been clear that protecting these civilians is their priority”, he said. “Every warrior knows that when we speak the names of the fallen, they live on”.
Pro-government forces celebrate in Sajar in Iraq’s Anbar province on May 27, 2016, as they take part in a major assault to retake the city of Fallujah from the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.
Fallujah was a center of the insurgency led by the ISIS’s predecessor, al Qaeda in Iraq, before the US withdrawal in 2011.
The Norwegian Refugee Council, an aid group working with refugees and the displaced in Iraq, reported that only 17 families has fled Fallujah since Sunday night and that most had fled from the city’s outskirts.
Backed by airstrikes from a US-led coalition, Iraqi forces are tightening their grip around Fallujah and dislodging IS militants from key areas.
IS fighters holed up in Fallujah are believed to number around 1,000 and while the myriad forces involved in the operation have moved closer, none have yet entered the city proper.
Humanitarian players have expressed concern over the fate of an estimated 50,000 civilians thought to be trapped inside the city.
The Iraqi Army says that the liberation of Fallujah marks an important milestone on the way to liberating a much more important and strategic city – Iraq’s second largest – Mosul in the north.
Those fighters include Iraqi federal police, Sunni tribal fighters and Shiite militia fighters under the government umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces.
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Despite plans before the operation for safe corridors, few civilians have managed to flee the Fallujah battle in recent days.
