Iraq forces in final push to retake Ramadi

Iraqi security forces cross a bridge built by corps of Engineers over the Euphrates River as Islamic State destroyed all the bridges leading to central Ramadi to block Iraqi security forces from moving forward in Ramadi. --AP

Iraqi forces closed in on the Islamic State’s (ISIS) last redoubts in central Ramadi Wednesday to retake the city they lost in May and further shrink the jihadists’ “caliphate”.

A day after punching deep into the city centre, forces led by the elite counter-terrorism service (CTS) inched towards the governmental compound in Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s vast Anbar province.

“The anti-terrorism troops are now poised to break into the Hoz area where the governmental compound is located,” a brigadier general in the force said.

The recapture of the compound would mark another key step towards reasserting full control over Ramadi, whose liberation a CTS spokesman said Tuesday would be achieved in three days.

Government forces, which have been supported by daily airstrikes from the US-led coalition, had to move carefully through the devastated city, whose deserted streets were littered with rubble and shrapnel.

Retreating ISIS fighters usually booby-trap their abandoned positions, plant roadside bombs and move in tunnels which can also be trapped with huge explosive charges.

Iraqi forces clearing residential neighbourhoods in Ramadi were finding huge amounts of ammunition and explosives, including rockets made from gas canisters.

Officials estimated before the latest push into Ramadi that no more than 300 ISIS fighters remained holed up in the centre.

“The fall of Ramadi is inevitable, the end is coming but... It’s going be a tough fight,” the US-led coalition’s spokesman, Colonel Steve Warren, told reporters on Tuesday.

He said thousands of civilians were still believed to be inside Ramadi, some of them used as human shields by the ISIS.

Several officials said groups of ISIS fighters were trying to slip through gaps in the Iraqi forces’ net around the city.

“Dozens of Daesh members have withdrawn from the city centre towards Sufiya and Sichariyah,” east of Ramadi along the Euphrates Valley, said Ibrahim al-Fahdawi, who heads the security committee in Khaldiya district.

The recapture of Ramadi would further isolate IS-held Fallujah — which lies half way on the road to Baghdad — and undermine the viability of the group’s self-proclaimed “caliphate”.