Iraqi forces recaptured territory from advancing Islamic State militants near the recently-fallen city of Ramadi yesterday.

Iraq’s government, along with Iran-backed Shi’ite militiamen and locally-recruited Sunni tribal fighters, launched a counter-offensive on Saturday, a week after losing Ramadi. A police major and a pro-government Sunni tribal fighter in the area said they had retaken the town of Husaiba al-Sharqiya, about 10 kilometres east of Ramadi.

“Today we regained control over Husaiba and are laying plans to make more advances to push back Daesh fighters further,” said local tribal leader Amir al-Fahdawi yesterday, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State, also known in English as Isis or Isil.

“The morale of the pro-government) fighters is high after the arrival of reinforcements and loads of ammunition,” Fahdawi said. “Today’s advance will speed up the clock for a major advance to regain control of Ramadi.”

Planes were bombing Islamic State positions on the opposite bank of the Euphrates river, where the militants were launching mortars and sniper fire to prevent the pro-government forces advancing, Fahdawi and the police major said.

In Iraq, government forces and Iran-backed Shi’ite militia advanced against the Sunni militants north of Baghdad in the Tigris river valley earlier this year, recapturing former dictator Saddam Hussein’s home city of Tikrit.

But the insurgents responded by going on the offensive west of Baghdad in the valley of Iraq’s other great river, the Euphrates, among the most hotly fought areas during the 2003-2011 US occupation.

Iraqi forces vastly outnumbered opposing forces but they withdrew

The fall of Ramadi and Palmyra, on opposite ends of the vast territory controlled by Islamic State fighters, were the militant group’s biggest successes since a US-led coalition launched an air war to stop them last year.

The near simultaneous victories against the Iraqi and Syrian armies have forced Washington to examine its strategy, which involves bombing from the air but leaving fighting on the ground to local forces in both countries. In a sharp criticism of Washington’s ally, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter accused Iraq’s army of abandoning Ramadi, a provincial capital west of Baghdad, to a much smaller enemy force.

“The Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight,” he told CNN’s State of the Union programme. “They vastly outnumbered the opposing force, and yet they withdrew from the site.”

Washington worries that Baghdad’s response of sending Shi’ite militia into the area for a counter-offensive could increase sectarian anger and play into Islamic State’s claim to defend Sunnis from a Shi’ite dominated government in Baghdad.

In Syria, where a four-year civil war has killed 250,000 people and made eight million homeless, al-Assad’s government has been losing territory in recent months, both to Islamic State and to other Sunni groups, some of which are supported by the West.

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