Shi’ite Muslim militiamen and Iraqi army forces launched a counter-offensive against Islamic State insurgents near Ramadi yesterday, a militia spokesman said, aiming to reverse potentially devastating gains by the jihadi militants.
The fall of Ramadi, the Anbar provincial capital, to Islamic State on May 17 could be a shattering blow to Baghdad’s weak central government. The Sunni Muslim jihadis now control most of Anbar and could threaten the western approaches to Baghdad, or even surge south into Iraq’s Shi’ite heartland.
Anbar provincial council member Azzal Obaid said hundreds of Shi’ite fighters, who had assembled last week at the Habbaniya air base, moved into Khalidiya yesterday and were nearing Siddiqiya and Madiq, towns in contested territory near Ramadi.
Two police officers later told Reuters the pro-government forces, which they said included locally allied Sunni tribesmen, had advanced past those towns to within one kilometre of Husaiba al-Sharqiya, an Islamic State-run town seven kilometres east of the Ramadi city limits.
One officer said the Shi’ite-led forces exchanged fire with Islamic State but there was no immediate word on casualties. Jaffar Husseini, spokesman for Shi’ite paramilitary group Kataib Hizbollah, said more than 2,000 reinforcements had joined the pro-government advance and they had managed to secure Khalidiya and the road linking it to Habbaniya.
The fall of Ramadi could be a shattering blow to Baghdad’s weak central government
“Today will witness the launch of some tactical operations that pave the way to the eventual liberation of Ramadi,” he told Reuters by telephone. At the same time, Islamic State units have been pushing towards Fallujah to try to absorb more territory between it and Ramadi that would bring them closer to Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, around 80 km to the east.
Islamic State has controlled Fallujah for more than a year.
Ramadi’s loss is the most serious setback for Iraqi forces in almost a year and has cast doubt on the effectiveness of the US strategy of air strikes to help Baghdad roll back Islamic State, which now holds a third each of Iraq and adjacent Syria.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, a Shi’ite, sent Shi’ite paramilitary groups out to Anbar to try to retake Ramadi despite the risk of inflaming tensions with the province’s aggrieved, predominantly Sunni population.
But he had little choice given the poor morale and cohesion within government security forces.
A UN spokesman said on Friday that some 55,000 people have fled Ramadi since it was stormed by Islamic State earlier this month, with most taking refuge in other parts of Anbar, a vast desert province that borders on Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
In Syria, Islamic State fighters raised their flag over an ancient citadel in the historic city of Palmyra, pictures posted online overnight by the group’s supporters showed.