The centre of Ramadi remains under Islamic State control, but Rasool said the militants, which Iraqi intelligence estimates number between 250 and 300 fighters, are losing the initiative and suffering food and ammunition shortages after government forces cut their last supply line into the city last month.
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“I am certain it will fall, and we will assist in the making of it fall”, he said.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter, speaking separately Thursday, said Iraqi progress in retaking Ramadi has been “disappointingly slow”.
Carter acknowledged a missing element in the campaign: a more assertive role by Sunni Arab allies from the Gulf in the effort against Islamic State, a Sunni extremist group. The administration is relying on authorizations for using US military force that were approved after 9/11.
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, one of the fiercest critics of Obama’s strategy to fight the militants, missed the hearing with Carter.
Maj. Gen. Ismail al-Mahlawi, the head of Iraqi military operations in Anbar province, said his troops were readying to push “toward the government complex and the Houz area” in central Ramadi “to start a large military operation to liberate the rest of Ramadi”.
Army Colonel Steve Warren told a Pentagon briefing that coalition strikes had killed Abu Salah, ISIS’ financial minister, as well as a senior leader responsible for coordinating the group’s extortion activities and another leader who acted as an executive officer. Following significant advances on Ramadi Tuesday, Iraqi forces are now preparing to push into the city center from the southwest and the north. Tuesday¿s advances, the most significant incursion into Ramadi since the city fell to the Islamic State group in May, have placed Iraqi forces along the southwest edge of Ramadi in the Tamim neighborhood and just north of the city at the former Anbar operations command.
Despite this, it took over six months for Iraqi troops to even successfully surround the city, and there is no timetable for retaking it. At the same time, he said, he also feared airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition that are targeting Islamic State fighters.
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“That has not materialized among them”, Carter said.
