The Iraqi security forces on Tuesday retook control of three districts in the city of Ramadi, as part of major offensive to capture of the city from the Islamic State (IS) militants, a provincial security source said.
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Backed by intensified airstrikes, Iraqi forces have encircled the city in recent weeks in an offensive that is seen as a key test of their ability to recapture urban areas from the Islamic State. President Obama said recently that the militant group had lost 40 percent of the Iraqi territory it had seized in the middle of a year ago, as the United States and its allies have intensified their aerial bombardment against the group.
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The operation to recapture Ramadi, which began in early November, has made slow progress, mainly because the government has chosen not to use the powerful Shia-dominated paramilitary force that helped it regain the northern city of Tikrit to avoid increasing sectarian tensions.
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164-a-06-(Colonel Steve Warren, U.S. military spokesman, in teleconference with Pentagon reporters)-“end is coming”-Colonel Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman, says Iraqi forces will retake Ramadi from Islamic State militants”.
Ramadi fell to the Islamic State in May, in a sudden collapse after a five-month battle.
Heavily armed… Iraqi troops are on a mission to retake Ramadi after losing the city in May. “We’re dealing with them with air force support”.
The coalition said its aircraft had been carrying out six strikes a day on IS targets in the Ramadi area for the past month.
After beefing up their new positions, Iraqi military leaders had said a final push was imminent and leaflets urging the population to flee were dropped over the weekend.
He also said there were at least thousands of civilians left inside Ramadi, “possibly tens of thousands”.
A security official in Anbar province said that “ISIS are preventing the people of Ramadi from leaving and using them as human shields”. It was the government’s biggest defeat since Islamic State militants swept through areas in the country’s north and west, including Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul, in the summer of 2014.
IS has lost several key towns in Iraq since Baghdad and the autonomous Kurdish region started fighting back following the jihadist group’s devastating offensive 18 months ago. On Monday, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi thanked military engineers for completing the temporary bridge that allowed troops to cross into the city.
Gutted… This image shows a bridge destroyed by ISIS to block Iraqi security forces from moving forward on the Euphrates river in Ramadi.
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Omar Al-Jawoshy reported from Baghdad, and Sewell Chan from London.
