Fight for Fallujah may be over, but people can't go home yet

FALLUJAH, Iraq — Sanaa Abed has spent weeks in a sweltering tent in a refugee camp, waiting for Iraqi forces to liberate this city from Islamic State militants so she can return home.

But the mother of four must continue waiting until the city has been fully secured and safe for residents to move back.

"My sons are dying in this heat," said Abed, 41, whose family fled Fallujah after the Iraqi offensive against the militants began in late May. "Life in the camp is daily torture. They want to sleep well, want to eat well, and I can't do anything for them."

Abed is part of a growing humanitarian crisis involving an estimated 85,000 residents who fled Fallujah in the past month, according to the United Nations.

“The people of Fallujah have been suffering under siege for many months without access to food or medical care," Maha Ahmed, with the U.N. World Food Program in Iraq, said Monday in a statement. "Reaching them now with life-saving food and other humanitarian assistance is the absolute top priority,”

Iraqi commander: 'Fallujah fight is over'

Iraqi military leaders declared Sunday that the city was liberated, although they were still checking areas for mines. After the victory announcement, Iraqis around the country poured into the streets, waving flags and singing.

Fallujah, a predominantly Sunni city about 40 miles west of Baghdad in Anbar Province, was not completely destroyed, as happened with winning back Ramadi from the Islamic State in December, according to the Iraqi military.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter congratulated Iraq on Monday for freeing Fallujah from the grip of the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, but cautioned that more needs to be done.

"The operation in Fallujah has been a significant challenge," Carter said in a statement. "It will not be the last. Hard fighting remains ahead, as does the vital task of caring for the residents of Fallujah displaced by ISIL’s violence and beginning to rebuild the city so that its people may safely return."

Some Iraqi soldiers expressed bitterness about the fight.

One soldier, Haidar Karim, stood on a bridge in Fallujah where he said the Islamic State had killed other soldiers when the militant extremists took control of the city two years ago.

"We have sacrificed our lives for the sake of the martyrs who were executed by the Islamic State in this city," he said. "From this bridge, they threw our mate. Mustafa al Athari. I can't forget how they brutally did that to a wounded soldier."

Ali Hussain, a member of the Iraqi counterterrorism unit, said, "We are very happy for this fast and clean victory. We were always hearing Fallujah would remain undefeated, but in fact the Islamic State fled very easily and faster than expected." He added that the militants "executed many soldiers. They killed prisoners in public. And many people from Fallujah were watching happily."

Now is the time to drive the Islamic State out of Iraq, where the group still controls the city of Mosul, said Faleh Hassan AlDarraji, a political analyst and commentator for Iraqi newspapers based in Baghdad.

"The loss of Fallujah has created a fundamental break in the structure of the Islamic state, and it means the destruction for the whole group — not just in Iraq but also in Syria," he said. "Mosul and other areas are still under their control but are not more strongly defended than Fallujah. Taking them back would be way easier."

That's little comfort for the thousands of refugees stranded outside Fallujah who want to go home and restart their lives. Aid officials said it could take months.

"We just do not know which areas are safe and which aren't," the Norwegian Refugee Council said in a statement. "We cannot expose these people who have suffered too much already to more harm."

That doesn't matter to some refugees.

"We don't have a lot in Fallujah now," Abed said. "My husband's shop is destroyed, and our house is badly damaged. But we are ready to start again — but in our home."