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| Iraq |
| IS Presses Ramadi Assault Saturday as Iraq Forces Mull Response |
| 2015-05-17 |
| [AnNahar] Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... fighters closed in on the last government-held positions in the Iraqi city of Ramadi Saturday after Baghdad vowed an air and ground counter-offensive. After seizing the Anbar provincial headquarters on Friday, the jihadist organization said it unleashed another fleet of suicide boom-mobiles on key positions in Ramadi. "Three suicide kaboomers in armored vehicles tried to break into the 8th Brigade base. The attack was repelled using armor-piercing rockets," said Ramadi Mayor Dalaf al-Kubaysi, one of the last officials still in the city. He said five soldiers were maimed. Most of the Iraqi government forces and Sunni rustics fighting alongside them are concentrated in that base and in the Anbar Operations Command across the Euphrates river. Civilians fled en masse as the jihadists took over several central neighborhoods on Thursday and Friday and looked on the brink of claiming full control of the city. The loss of the capital of Anbar province, which Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had said would be the next target of government forces after wresting back Tikrit last month, would be a major setback. After meeting top security officials in Baghdad on Friday, Abadi vowed his government would not abandon Ramadi. The army sent reinforcements from Baghdad and elsewhere in Anbar, with local officials saying Iraqi and U.S.-led coalition aircraft were also in action, but there was little sign of a major counter-offensive inside the city on Saturday. "Security forces in Ramadi are taking position against the attacks of Daesh, mainly in the areas of Malaab and Operations Command," Kubaysi said, using an Arab acronym for IS. "There are no military operations to take back the areas that were captured by Daesh," he said. Jessica Lewis, research director at the Institute for the Study of War, said the government could not afford to let Ramadi fall completely. "The Iraqi security forces will not let Ramadi go to ISIS (IS) without a massive fight," she said. "It is key terrain. Not only is it Anbar's capital city, but it is also a military gap in ISIS's control line in Anbar," Lweis said. Ramadi lies about 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Baghdad. IS holds Fallujah, ... the City of Mosques, which might have somthing to do with why it's not called Center of Prosperityor a really nice place to raise your kids... about halfway between the two, and several key towns in western Anbar between Ramadi and the Syrian border. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #2 Yuup. * See FREEREPUBLIC > [McClatchy] ISLAMIC STATE ROUTS LAST ELITE IRAQ UNITS FROM RAMADI IN HUGE DEFEAT FOR BAGHDAD. FYI CNN AM repors that Ramadi per se has now fallen to the ISIS, although the Iraqi Govt. claims there still pockets of Anti-ISIS armed Iraqi resistance in the city. THE ISIS IS REPOR IN FULL CONTROL OF RAMADI. IIRC/IIHC, CNN AM > IRAQ = getting ready to allegedly counter-attack in new offensive to eliminate the ISIS from Ramadi. The Battle for Ramadi has cost the Iraqi Army-Govt THREE of their best-trained or elite Regiments. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2015-05-17 20:31 |
| #1 Looks like the 8th brigade has fled. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2015-05-17 18:20 |