Islamic State militants raised their black flag over the local government headquarters in the Iraqi city of Ramadi yesterday and claimed victory through mosque loudspeakers after overrunning most of the western provincial capital.
If Ramadi were to fall it would be the first major city seized by the insurgents in Iraq since security forces and paramilitary groups began pushing them back last year.
The insurgents attacked Ramadi overnight using six suicide car bombs to reach the city centre, where the Anbar provincial government compound is located, sources said.
Fighting continued in one district of Ramadi, 100 km west of Baghdad, and government forces were still in control of a military command centre to the west of the city.
“The situation in Ramadi is dire, but the city has not fallen and the battle against criminal Daesh is still ongoing,” Anbar’s governor said on Twitter, using an Arabic name for Islamic State.
Mosul stronghold
Ramadi has been fought over for months, but the insurgents renewed their offensive there in April, crushing government forces’ efforts to retake Anbar, Iraq’s largest province, and move north to the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul.
An army major whose regiment is positioned near the Anbar operations command described the situation as critical and said the militants had taken control of the only major supply route into the city, making it difficult to send reinforcements.
Most army and police units have retreated to the area around the operation command to protect it, he said, but some elite counter-terrorism forces were “fighting for their lives” in the Malaab district of central Ramadi, where they were surrounded.
“If the government does not send any reinforcements and the coalition air force does not rescue us, we will lose all of Ramadi by midnight,” the major said. “A massacre will take place and all of us will be slaughtered.” Prime minister Haider al-Abadi met with military and security leaders yesterday and pledged to intensify efforts to “expel the terrorist gangs from Ramadi”.
Ramadi is one of the few towns and cities to have remained under government control in the vast desert province, which borders Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan.
More than 130,000 people have fled Anbar since the militants renewed their offensive on Ramadi last month, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
– (Reuters)