Iraq’s army declared victory over Islamic State (IS) group fighters in a provincial capital west of Baghdad

Brigadier General Yahya Rasool said
the capital of Anbar province, west of
the capital Baghdad, had been "fully
liberated" from IS militants and that
the Iraqi flag had been raised over
the government complex.
But another senior comander,
General Ismail al-Mahlawi, quickly
cautioned that parts of the city
remained under IS group control.
The jihadist fighters seized the city in
May after government troops fled in
a defeat which prompted Washington
to take a hard look at strategy in its
ongoing air war against the militants.
After encircling the city for weeks,
the Iraqi military launched a
campaign to retake it last week, and
made a final push to seize the
central administration complex on
Sunday.The US-led anti-IS coalition praised

the performance of the Iraqi forces in
retaking Ramadi, an operation in
which it played a significant role,
training local forces, arming them
and carrying out what it said were
600 air strikes since July.
French President François Hollande
called the liberation of Ramadi the
"most important victory yet" in the
fight against the jihadists.
State television broadcast footage of
troops, Humvee vehicles and tanks
advancing through Ramadi streets
amid piles of rubble and collapsed
houses. Some districts appeared to
have been completely destroyed by
the advance.

‘Most civilians evacuated before
assault’

Television also showed nighttime
celebrations in mainly Shiite cities
south of Baghdad for the victory in
Anbar, with people dancing in the
streets and waving Iraqi flags from
cars.
Officials did not give any immediate
death tolls for the battle. The
government says most civilians were
able to evacuate before it launched
its assault.

Anbar provincial council member
Falih al-Essawi called on the
government to restore services to
Ramadi quickly and start rebuilding
the city to allow the return of the
displaced.
“It will not be easy to convince
families to return to a city that lacks
basic human needs,” he told Reuters.
The IS group, also known by the
acronyms ISIS, ISIL or Daesh, swept
through a third of Iraq in June 2014
and declared a “caliphate” to rule
over all Muslims from territory in
both Iraq and Syria, carrying out
mass killings and imposing a
draconian form of Islam.
Its rise was aided by the swift
collapse of the Iraqi army, which
abandoned city after city, leaving
fleets of armoured vehicles and other
American weapons in the fighters’
hands.
Since then, the battle against the
group in both countries has drawn in
most global and regional powers,
often with competing allies on the
ground in complex multi-sided civil
wars.
A US-led coalition is waging an air
campaign against the IS group, but
rebuilding the Iraqi army to the point
that it could recapture and hold
territory has been one of the biggest
challenges.
In previous battles, including the
recapture of former dictator Saddam
Hussein’s home city Tikrit in April,
the Iraqi government relied on Iran-
backed Shiite militias for ground
fighting, with its own army mainly in
a supporting role.
Complete control
Ramadi was the first major city
recaptured without relying on the
Shiite militias, who were kept off the
battlefield to avoid sectarian tension
with the mainly Sunni population.
The government, led by a Shiite
Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, said
Ramadi would be handed over to
local police and a Sunni tribal force
once it was secured, a measure
meant to win over the community to
the fight against Islamic State.
“We have trained hundreds of tribal
fighters, their role will be holding the
ground,” said Brigadier-General
Yahya Rasool, spokesman for the
joint operations command.
“Seeing their own tribes responsible
for security will be a relief for the
civilians” and will help convince
those who have been displaced to
return to the city, he added.
The strategy echoes the “surge”
campaign fought by US forces in
2006-2007 against a precursor of the
IS group, when Washington also
relied on winning over local Sunni
tribes and arming them to fight
militants. Anbar province, including
Ramadi, was one of the main
battlefields during that campaign at
the height of the 2003-2011 Iraq war.
The government said the next target
after Ramadi will be the northern city
of Mosul, by far the largest
population centre controlled by IS
militants in either Iraq or Syria.
Dislodging the militants from Mosul,
which had a pre-war population close
to 2 million, would effectively abolish
their state structure in Iraq and
deprive them of a major source of
funding, which comes partly from oil
and partly from fees and taxes on
residents.

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