This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/30/iraqi-forces-enter-fallujah-in-attempt-to-drive-out-islamic-state

The article has changed 13 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 6 Version 7
Isis attacks in Baghdad kill 11 as Iraqi forces try to retake Falluja Iraqi troops begin operation to seize Falluja from Isis
(about 3 hours later)
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings in Baghdad as Iraqi forces entered Falluja, the latest phase in the week-long operation to capture the militants’ stronghold near the Iraqi capital. Iraqi troops have begun a long-awaited operation to seize control of the embattled city of Falluja from Islamic State, amid fears the militants will use the tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the city as human shields.
At least 11 people were killed, Iraqi officials said, in attacks in the Shia-dominated Shaab and Sadr City districts of Baghdad. Both were claimed by Isis in online postings, which said it was targeting members of Shia militia. The assault, launched in the early hours of Monday, comes after a week of preparations that focused on encircling the city, which fell to Isis early in 2014, months before it announced the creation of its self-proclaimed caliphate.
The bombings came amid an operation west of Baghdad to retake Falluja, which has been under Isis control for more than two years. Backed by US-led coalition airstrikes, Iraqi commanders said elite counter-terrorism forces had begun a multi-pronged attack aiming to reach the city centre.
Tens of thousands of civilians are believed trapped in the city, with few able to escape. “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 Lt Gen Abdelwahab al-Saadi, the commander of the operation.
Related: Kurdish forces in big push against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria Explosions and gunfire could be heard in the southern Naimiya district as Iraqi forces advanced and state television reported that an elite military unit seized the district’s police station at midday local time.
A spokesman for Iraq’s elite counter-terrorism service said troops had entered the city from three directions. Explosions and gunfire could be heard in the southern Naimiya district as Iraqi forces advanced. The assault is likely to last for days amid stiff resistance from the militants, who have long been entrenched in Falluja, which was seized months before Isis surged into northern Iraq and conquered the Nineveh plains and the city of Mosul.
State television reported that an elite military unit seized the district’s police station at midday local time. It also comes amid a concerted campaign against Isis in both Iraq and Syria that has stretched the militants across multiple fronts and brought anti-Isis forces closer to the Syrian city of Raqqa, its de facto capital, and Mosul, Iraq’s second city.
If the advance on Falluja succeeds, it will effectively pen Isis back towards its de facto Iraqi capital, Mosul, with limited chances of it breaking out to seize more Iraqi territory. Related: Isis may face Falluja bloodbath, but new offensive shows power to spread terror
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. Kurdish paramilitaries and Arab fighters backed by US special forces are expanding their offensive in northern Syria, drawing closer to Raqqa, while the Turkish military said it had killed at least 28 Isis fighters in shelling north of Aleppo on Sunday.
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. In Iraq, Kurdish troops on Sunday launched a campaign to liberate a series of villages on the road east from Mosul to Erbil.
“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 Lt Gen Abdelwahab al-Saadi, the commander in charge of the operation on Monday. But the Falluja offensive faces many hurdles, including an estimated 50,000 civilians who remain trapped and besieged, facing starvation inside the confines of the city, and that observers fear will be used as human shields to slow the progress of Iraqi forces.
“Counter-terrorism service forces, the Anbar police and the Iraqi army, at around 4am (0100 GMT), started moving into Falluja from three directions.” “There is resistance from Daesh,” he added, using an Arabic acronym for Isis. The UN high commissioner for refugees said 800 civilians had so far fled Falluja over the past few days, often traveling on foot and escaping through irrigation pipes. Those inside the city have had little access to food and clean water, since roads into the jihadist stronghold were cut off in December last year.
The Iraqi army, supported by Iranian-backed Shia militia, began the operation to recapture Falluja on 23 May by tightening its siege around the city, 30 miles west of Baghdad, and has begun a direct assault. Some also fear retribution by auxiliary Shia militias taking part in the campaign, a number of whom are suspicious that the civilians who have remained in the city are sympathetic to the Isis cause.
The US said late on Friday it had killed the top Isis commander in Falluja in airstrikes that also hit about 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. In a video published over the weekend, the leader of the Abul Fadl al-Abbas militia called for the cleansing of the “tumor of Falluja”, saying there were no patriots in the city.
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. Isis responded to the offensive by dispatching suicide bombers in and around Baghdad, in three attacks that targeted the populous Sadr City suburb and the Shaab neighborhood, as well as the Tarmiya area north of the capital, killing more than 20 people in the largely Shia districts.
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. Isis claimed responsibility for the attacks in statements circulated online, which also featured images of the suicide bomber who carried out the Tarmiya attack, a foreign fighter of Moroccan origin.
Some families that tried to flee were 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. Isis militants also claimed to have killed dozens of Iraqi forces in the fighting around Falluja, and to have dispatched two suicide bombers against their advance.
An estimated 50,000 civilians are still trapped inside, sparking fears the jihadis 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 main Iraqi town to come under Isis’s control and links it to earlier groups fighting the US and the central government.Just 40 miles, or less than an hour’s drive, west of Baghdad, Falluja was the first main Iraqi town to come under Isis’s control and links it to earlier groups fighting the US and the central government.
Related: Mosul: suspicion and hostility cloud fight to recapture Iraqi city from Isis
“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.”“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 If the advance on Falluja succeeds, it will effectively pen Isis back towards Mosul, with limited chances of it breaking out to seize more Iraqi territory.
Pressure has also increased on Isis forces in Syria, where the Turkish military said it had 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 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 an 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 a 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 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.But Mosul 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.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,” Tamimi said.