Iraqi security forces on Thursday fought fierce clashes with Islamic State (IS) militants and retook control of an area near the IS-held city of Fallujah in Iraq’s western province of Anbar, while the US -led air strikes continued against IS positions outside the city, a military statement and a security source said.
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Al-Saadi, who also commanded the Tikrit operation, says coalition air power in Fallujah has prevented vehicle bombs from inflicting casualties on his forces, but they have still succeeded in slowing progress.
The U.S. -led coalition says they have carried out four airstrikes against Islamic State targets in and around Fallujah since Wednesday.
Iraqi security forces and allied Popular Mobilization Forces clash with Islamic State militants in Saqlawiyah near Fallujah, Iraq, Thursday, June 2, 2016.
On Wednesday, Abadi said concern for the estimated 50,000 civilians the United Nations has said IS was using as human shields was slowing progress.
“In Fallujah, Daesh has die-hard fighters defending a city they consider as a symbol for Jihad”, said analyst and former army general Jasim al-Bahadili.
Since the start of the operation on May 22-23, Iraqi commanders have claimed to have killed dozens of ISIL fighters but remain hesitant about releasing their own casualty figures.
After a week of shaping operations aimed at breaking the two year siege of Fallujah, which lies about 50km west of Baghdad, elite forces launched a new, more aggressive phase on Monday morning.
The coffins of at least 70 fighters killed in the Fallujah fighting had by Wednesday been brought to Najaf’s Valley of Peace cemetery, where many from Iraq’s Shiite majority bury their dead, according to a security source there.
Officials in Basra said the southern province had lost 26 fighters from the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force alone.
Inside Fallujah, residents are facing worsening shortages in food, water, and medicine, as well as extreme violence, fueled in part by forced recruitment into the fight by ISIS, among other problems.
No aid has reached Fallujah since September past year and residents have been living on dates, dirty water from the Euphrates and animal feed.
“ISIL have moved many families to the centre of town where they’re a kind of human shield”, she said citing informants on the ground. “We’re anxious that there might even be a cholera outbreak because of this”.
The U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, has warned that it’s too soon to say how long the battle will take because many civilians in the Sunni stronghold, distrustful of the Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad and fearful of the Iranian-backed Shiite militias supporting it, may ultimately decide to throw in their lot with ISIS.
The few families who have managed to escape had to cross the Euphrates River, a scene eerily similar to the refugees risking their lives at sea.
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Known as the City of Minarets and Mother of Mosques, it was badly damaged in two assaults by the USA army in 2004.
