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Iraqi troops inflict first big defeat on Isis in Ramadi
IRAQI troops liberated the centre of Ramadi from Islamic State (Isis) yesterday, the first major defeat for the extremists.
Brigadier General Ahmed al-Belawi said that Isis militants stopped firing from inside the government complex at about 8am and that troops were encircling it as engineering teams cleared boobytraps.
A few hours later, military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool announced in a televised statement that Ramadi had been “fully liberated.”
But General Ismail al-Mahlawi, head of military operations in Anbar, clarified that Isis still controlled about a third of the city and that there remained pockets of resistance in government-controlled districts.
A city of 450,000 people, Ramadi is the capital of Anbar province on the great Tigris river. It fell to Isis in May, with government troops apparently offering little opposition.
Several attempts to retake the city failed before this month’s counteroffensive.
Isis controls large swathes on north-western Iraq, playing on local grievances over loss of power and wealth following the 2003 US invasion.
The Wahhabi army’s de-facto capital is the oil-rich northern city of Mosul on the Euphrates.
On Saturday the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia captured the strategic Tishreen dam on the upper Euphrates near Turkey from Isis.
The victory allows the YPG to advance westward across the river into the Isis-held strip of border country, a move that Turkey has declared a rubicon that would prompt military retaliation.
Turkey’s government stands accused of allowing Isis to smuggle oil across the border to buy arms and and bring in new recruits.
In Syria, some 300 families were evacuated from the villages of Foua and Kfarya in Idlib province to Lebanon yesterday.
The evacuation was part of a UN-backed deal whereby more than a hundred opposition militants and their families will be taken from Zabadani, near the Lebanese border west of Damascus, to Beirut, from where they will be flown to Turkey.
Foua and Kfarya lie in a pocket of Syrian army resistance to extremist Army of Conquest forces occupying the nearby city of Idlib.
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