“Our estimate is that there are around 50,000 civilians in Falluja”, he said.
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Less than a day into the operation, security forces retook Karma, a small town that lies in a sprawling rural area northeast of Fallujah, the general in charge said. Its capture of the city so close to Baghdad at the beginning of 2014 was the extremist Sunni movement’s first spectacular military victory.
Since May 17, USA -led “coalition air power has struck 21 targets in and around Fallujah”, Col. Steve Warren, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the coalition, posted on Twitter on Monday.
The authorities have pledged to retake Mosul, the north’s biggest city, in 2016 in keeping with a USA plan to oust ISIS from their de facto capitals in Iraq and Syria. Fallujah has been under the control of IS for more than two years. It also suffered damage in US offensives against al-Qaeda insurgents in 2004.
Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi announced the start of the offensive, which had been delayed by political infighting and the deteriorating security in Baghdad, on his Twitter account. The U.N. reported only 80 families have fled in recent days.
The Shiite-led government has to deal with deepening political and social unrest in the capital over corruption and lack of public services.
The U.S. military believes about 1,000 ISIS fighters remain in Anbar Province with ISIS numbers decreasing as the result of recent Iraqi military victories in Rutbah and Hit in the Euphrates River Valley.
United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said: “It’s important that they have some safe corridors that they could use”.
Those unable to leave were advised to avoid buildings associated with IS and raise a white flag above their homes.But residents say that because IS controls the main roads, thousands are trapped. The practice significantly slowed the pace of other operations in Anbar. While the counterterrorism troops are some of Iraqs most competent forces, they still rely heavily on air support to retake territory.The first stage of the operation is to surround (the city) and target the Daesh headquarters with bombing operations, said Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahad al-Saadi, head of the counterterrorism forces in the operation.
The Iraqi army, police and militias have had the city surrounded since late past year, while IS fighters have prevented numerous city’s residents from leaving.
On Monday, the popular mobilization forces – an umbrella group for Iraq’s largely Shiite militias – announced that they had retaken the nearby city of Garma, where pro-government fighters had been bogged down battling the militants for months.
The Iraqi armed forces are short of combat-ready soldiers and they are reliant on two brigades of well-trained and experienced counter-terrorist troops numbering about 5,000 men.
A Pentagon spokesman said the US military was ready to deploy USA combat helicopters in the battle if the Iraqi government asked for it. It has often been called the “city of mosques”, and it has always been a stronghold of Sunni extremism, serving as a kind of early home base for Al Qaeda in Iraq.
In past operations, Iraqi forces have gone to great lengths to surround territory before clearing it to try to prevent IS fighters from escaping. The United States has been anxious about the involvement of Shiite paramilitaries in offensives in Sunni areas because those forces are largely supported by Iran. Numerous forces have been accused of abusing Sunnis in previous operations against IS.The decision to launch an offensive against Fallujah before moving on Mosul marks a departure from plans to focus attention northward after Iraqi forces cleared territory along the Euphrates River valley in Anbar province. In the past, local Sunnis and rights groups accused the mobilization units of abusing Sunnis in areas such as Tikrit and Diyala.
Mr Abadi said his forces would “tear up the black banners of strangers who usurped this city” and later claimed that Isil’s defences were “collapsing”. Firaz Basher, a spokesman for the Nineveh operations command overseeing operations to retake Mosul.
The offensive comes a week after Iraqi forces pushed IS out of the western town of Rutba, located 240 miles (380 kilometers) west of Baghdad, on the edge of Anbar province.
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“I can assure you that this will not affect the rhythm of the Mosul operation, nor its timeline”, he said.
