Islamic State (IS) fighters pressed an advance east of Ramadi yesterday after breaching Iraqi defences outside the city the insurgents overran last weekend in a major defeat for the Baghdad government.

The fall of this strategic city comes only weeks after IS itself was pushed out of Tikrit further north, exciting premature speculation that the jihadis might be on the run.

The group’s capture of Ramadi happened in tandem with its seizure of Palmyra, with its two millennia-old Roman columns and priceless antiquities.

IS needed no more than a few hundred fighters to take Palmyra, highlighting the acute manpower shortage faced by Bashar al-Assad’s government, now into its fifth year of a civil war that has claimed more than 220,000 lives and displaced around half of Syria’s population.

IS needed no more than a few hundred fighters to take Palmyra, highlighting acute manpower shortage faced by Assad

Palmyra, or Tadmur in Arabic, is a world heritage site the jihadis might now destroy, as they did the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud this year. It has great strategic and symbolic value for IS, with nearby gas fields, and roads to the capital Damascus, Homs, the cradle of the revolt against Assad in Syria’s centre, and to the south.

Meanwhile the fall of Ramadi is the most significant setback for Iraqi forces in almost a year and has cast doubt on the effectiveness of US strategy in helping Iraq to fight Islamic State.

While pro-government forces are seeking to retake the town, Islamic State fighters have been pushing forward in the direction of Fallujah in a bid to take more territory in Anbar province that would bring them closer to the Iraqi capital.

Amir al-Fahdawi, a leader of the pro-government Sunni tribal force in the area, said the militants were now around five kilometres from the town of Khalidiya next to the Habbaniya military base where security forces and members of the Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) Shi’ite militia are massing.

“We are running short of arms and ammunition and we appealed yesterday for reinforcements. Zero additional troops plus zero ammunition back-up lead to zero morale for our fighters,” Fahdawi said.

“Today we retreated to Siddi­qiya and I’m not sure if my fighters will hold up for much longer: they are tired and broken”.

Hundreds of people were fleeing as the militants drew closer, Anbar provincial, council member Azzal Obaid said.

Obaid said the insurgents were exploiting low morale among the security forces, and that the only way to stop them would be to deploy Shi’ite paramilitaries in large numbers.

Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called for a plan to purge the country of Islamic State militants after they overran Ramadi.

In his first sermon since then, al-Sistani’s representative Sheikh Abdulmehdi al-Karbalai did not refer explicitly to the city. But he said: “We must have a precise and wise plan drawn up by professional and patriotic figures ... to resolve the military and security issues and begin to purge Iraqi lands of all terrorists.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has sent Shi’ite paramilitary groups to try to retake Ramadi, capital of the westerly Anbar province, at the risk of inflaming tensions with the region’s aggrieved predominantly Sunni Muslim population.

The insurgents are now marching east from Ramadi and late on Thursday overran an Iraqi defensive line, advancing towards the Habbaniya military base.

“The focus has been on defence more than offence: this enables the enemy to have the upper hand,” al-Sistani said.

“The initiative must always remain with the armed forces, Hashid and tribal fighters.”

Last June, after Islamic State militants seized the northern city of Mosul, a call to arms by al-Sistani mobilised thousands of mainly Shi’ite volunteers to blunt the group’s surge.

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