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Iraqi army enters Fallujah in attempt to drive out Islamic State Iraqi army enters Falluja in attempt to drive out Islamic State
(35 minutes later)
The Iraqi army has started an operation to storm Fallujah, the Islamic State group’s stronghold near Baghdad. Iraqi army-led units have started an operation to storm the Isis-held city of Falluja, the latest phase in the week-long operation to capture the militant’s stronghold near Baghdad.
A military unit is trying to advance in the city, one military officer said as explosions and gunfire could be heard in Fallujah’s southern Naimiya district. Tens of thousands of civilians are believed trapped in the city with few able to escape.
Related: Kurdish forces in big push against Islamic State in Iraq and SyriaRelated: Kurdish forces in big push against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
A spokesman for Iraq’s elite counter-terrorisn service said troops entered the city from three directions. A spokesman for Iraq’s elite counter-terrorisn service said troops entered the city from three directions. Explosions and gunfire could be heard in the southern Naimiya district as a military unit advanced.
“Iraqi forces entered Fallujah under air cover from the international coalition, the Iraqi air force and army aviation and supported by artillery and tanks, said lieutenant general Abdelwahab al-Saadi, the commander in charge of the operation. As Iraqi forces advanced, a suicide car bombing in a Shia district of Baghdad, which bore all the hallmarks of attacks claimed by Isis in recent weeks, killed at least eight people.
“Counter-terrorism service (CTS) forces, the Anbar police and the Iraqi army, at around 4 am (0100 GMT), started moving into Fallujah from three directions,” he said. If the advance on Falluja succeeds, it will effectively pen Isis back towards its de facto Iraqi capital, Mosul, with limited chances of it echoing breaking out to seize more Iraqi territory.
Falluja became the first Iraqi city to fall under the control of Isis in January 2014, six months before it declared a caliphate over territory seized in Iraq and Syria. The militants have since used the city as a redoubt within reach of Baghdad, where the much-weakened Iraqi national government sits.
The long-awaited military push against Isis in Falluja began last week amid a political crisis that has pitched a restive public, angered by poor services and widespread corruption, against a government in Baghdad that has been unable to deal decisively with the terror group.
“Iraqi forces entered Falluja under air cover from the international coalition, the Iraqi air force and army aviation and supported by artillery and tanks, said Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al-Saadi, the commander in charge of the operation on Monday.
“Counter-terrorism service forces, the Anbar police and the Iraqi army, at around 4 am (0100 GMT), started moving into Falluja from three directions,” he said.
“There is resistance from Daesh,” he added, using an Arabic acronym for Isis.“There is resistance from Daesh,” he added, using an Arabic acronym for Isis.
CTS spokesman Sabah al-Norman said: “We started early this morning our operations to break into Fallujah.” The Iraqi army, supported by Iranian-backed Shia militia, began the operation to recapture Falluja on 23 May, first by tightening its siege around the city, 50km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, and has now begun a direct assault.
The Iraqi army, supported by Iranian-backed Shia militia, began the operation to recapture Fallujah on 23 May, first by tightening its siege around the city, 50km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, and has now begun a direct assault. The US said late on Friday it had killed the top Isis commander in Falluja in airstrikes that also hit around 70 other fighters, and an Iraqi militia commander said the final assault would come within “days, not weeks” amid grim reports of civilians starving to death.
Only a few hundred families managed to slip out of the Fallujah area ahead of the assault on the city, with an estimated 50,000 civilians still trapped inside, sparking fears the jihadists could try to use them as human shields. Penned in by a siege, with food and medicines running short, Isis has trapped tens of thousands of civilians in the city as human shields, a handful of families who escaped in recent days told aid organisations and journalists.
In January 2014, Fallujah became the first Iraqi city to fall under the control of the militants, six months before they declared a caliphate over territory seized in Iraq and Syria. They have risked their lives to flee past Isis controls or through minefields, convinced that the fighting to come would be even more dangerous for ordinary Iraqis trapped inside their homes.
Pressure was also increasing on Isis forces in Syria where the Turkish military said it killed at least 28 Islamic State fighters in shelling north of Aleppo on Sunday. Some families that tried to flee were however stopped by Isis, which has vowed to defend its positions with the same intensity shown by Sunni groups in two large battles against US forces in 2004.
The attack hit 58 Islamic State targets with artillery and rocket launchers, CNN Turk said. An estimated 50,000 civilians are still trapped inside, sparking fears the jihadists could try to use them as human shields.
Isis is understood to have almost 2,000 fighters in Falluja as well as a large number of supporters.
Just 40 miles or less than an hour’s drive west of Baghdad, Falluja was the first major Iraqi town to come under Isis’s control and links it to earlier groups fighting the US and the central government.
“Symbolically since the days of the US occupation, the city has acquired a status of resistance to outside forces,” said Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a fellow at the Middle East Forum. “Significant damage is likely, as Isis is really putting up a fight to retain the city.”
Related: Inside the hunt for Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Pressure was also increasing on Isis forces in Syria where the Turkish military said it killed at least 28 Isis fighters in shelling north of Aleppo on Sunday.
The attack hit 58 Isis targets with artillery and rocket launchers, CNN Turk said.
Isis has also been losing ground to an alliance of Kurdish fighters and rebels who are supported by US special forces in the countryside north of its self-declared capital of Raqqa.
This second front potentially puts the Isis capital at risk, and military planners hoped that it might draw attention away from the fight for Falluja as Isis commanders struggle with mounting losses of territory that they rely on for financial support, drawing foreign recruits and claiming legitimacy.
Instead the group has launched a new assault on the ground in Syria, near the key city of Aleppo, and went on the offensive internationally with a message from a top official urging supporters in the western world to launch terrorist attacks during the month of Ramadan.
On the ground the group focused on areas where rebel groups that fought them off last year had been weakened by Russian-backed government forces, advancing towards towns that secure a key supply line to rebels and sending thousands of civilians fleeing towards the Turkish border.
An Isis spokesman, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, made his rare appeal to supporters further away, calling on those in western countries to carry out attacks over Ramadan. “The tiniest action you do in the heart of their land is dearer to us than the biggest action by us,” he said.
Adnani directly addressed the shrinking size of the self-proclaimed caliphate and a possible future loss of territory, including the “capitals” in Raqqa and Mosul, but offered a defiant promise that Isis could continue without them. Even if Isis were pushed out of its strongholds, this would not count as a defeat, because “defeat is the loss of will and the desire to fight”, he said.
In Iraq, Isis’s long-term future looks perhaps a little shakier, after months of foreign allies pouring funds, equipment and training efforts into bolstering the Iraqi army and the government and Shia militias working to combat the sectarian fears that Isis have been exploiting to win local support.
But Mosul itself could stay beyond government reach for a long time. It is more important to Isis than Ramadi or Falluja, strategically and financially, and fighters are dug in far more deeply among a larger civilian population.
If the cost in civilian lives of pushing Isis out of Falluja is high, it could set a bloody template for the defence of Mosul, and make a drive to reclaim the city even more complicated.
“Mosul is still important to [Isis] as a de facto capital in Iraq and an important source of revenue. I think the talk of a push on Mosul was really just a testing ground at a considerable distance from the city for coalition-trained forces. A lot more work is to be done,” al-Tamimi said.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.