Refugees Daily - Internal Global Press Review

Iraqi troops made a new push on Tuesday to retake the center of Ramadi, a strategic city close to the capital Baghdad, which has been under Islamic State control since May.

Iraqi army units and American-trained counterterrorism forces, backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, attempted to advance on a former government compound in the city center from the north, south and east, said Sabah Karhout, a top provincial official.

The military launched a counteroffensive to retake Ramadi a month ago, and its forces have since recaptured a western district and the provincial military command headquarters. The presence of hundreds of civilians in the city, however, has caused weeks of delay in the start of the assault to retake control of the entire city, Iraqi military officers said.

The loss of Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar province some 60 miles west of Baghdad, was a stinging blow for the central government. But in recent months, Islamic State has suffered a string of defeats elsewhere at hands of Iraqi security forces and allied paramilitary groups. Those forces now hope to keep up that momentum by recapturing Ramadi.

Tuesday's ground offensive began at 6:30 a.m. local time, when military engineers installed a temporary bridge over the Euphrates River, according to Sabah al-Numani, head of the government's counterterrorism forces.

Iraqi troops crossed the bridge and entered the al-Huz neighborhood, south of central Ramadi, where they surprised Islamic State fighters.

"The enemy was in complete shock and confusion, which enabled our forces to defeat the enemy there," Mr. Numani said.

On Tuesday afternoon, Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State, tweeted pictures of what he said were Iraqi soldiers practicing the same bridge-building maneuver they used to enter Ramadi at a U.S. training session early this month.

By early Tuesday afternoon local time, Iraqi troops had pushed into the neighborhood of al-Baker, close to the government compound south of the city center, said Mr. Numani.

U.S. intelligence estimates indicate that only about 250-350 Islamic State fighters are in Ramadi, said Col. Warren. Combined Iraqi government forces, including federal police and Sunni tribal fighters who weren't actively involved in Tuesday's initial push, number as many as 10,000 men, Col. Warren said.

The Iraqi troops were likely to face fierce resistance. Islamic State has routinely used improvised explosive devices, booby-trapped buildings and suicide car and truck bombings to repel much larger attacking armies.

"Victory in Ramadi means a victory for Iraqi security forces," said Brig. Gen. Yehya Rasool, an Iraqi military spokesman. "It means that our forces have the initiative now, and our forces will now lead the fight everywhere."

Iraqi state television announced the offensive Tuesday morning. The government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has twice announced major military operations to retake Ramadi and the surrounding Anbar province. In each instance, the operations have failed.

Iraqi planes dropped pamphlets in Ramadi last weekend, urging civilians to leave the city within 72 hours. Residents said Islamic State fighters were preventing them from fleeing, hoping to use them as human shields when the push to take full control of the city got under way.

As the offensive began, Mr. Abadi and his defense minister, Khalid al-Obeidi, were absent. The two leaders arrived in Beijing on Tuesday morning for meetings with Chinese officials to discuss military, economic and energy cooperation.

Mr. Abadi's visit to Beijing is only one part of the prime minister's attempts to seek international support as Iraq's economy struggles to absorb the cost of fighting Islamic State and sheltering hundreds of thousands of refugees as its oil revenues plummet.

The prime minister signed five separate memorandums of understanding for cooperation in various fields with the Chinese government on Tuesday, Iraqi state media said.

A success against Islamic State in Ramadi, coupled with the high-profile visit, offers a much-needed boost to Mr. Abadi's declining political stature at home.

The prime minister has spent the past several months staving off criticism from Iran-backed militia leaders and Shiite Muslim politicians who accuse him of relying too heavily on American support in the fight against the extremist group.

The mostly Shiite militias, known as Popular Mobilization Forces, are allied with the army and have played a key role in most of its gains against Islamic State over the past year. But Mr. Abadi, partly at the urging of U.S. officials, blocked the militias from fighting in Sunni-majority Ramadi for fear of inflaming sectarian tensions.

The U.S. and its coalition allies don't coordinate directly with most units of Popular Mobilization Forces, the majority of which are financially backed by Iran. The coalition tries to avoid deploying its airstrikes on battlefields where those forces are deployed to avoid accidentally killing the militiamen.

The power struggle between the U.S.-led coalition and the Popular Mobilization Forces has complicated the fight against Islamic State. And a victory in Ramadi risks angering the Shiite militias who might see a win in Ramadi as both violation of Iraqi sovereignty and ploy to strengthen American influence in the country.

The U.S. has been unusually engaged in the Ramadi operation. Coalition airstrikes have played a crucial role in Iraq's recent victories over Islamic State, Iraqi officials have said, and in the lead-up to Tuesday's offensive.

A battle to retake the small northern Iraqi city of Sinjar in November was won almost entirely from the air, allowing Kurdish fighters known as Peshmerga to wrest the city from remaining Islamic State militants in days.

American military officials in Iraq have warned against comparing Sinjar to Ramadi, a much larger city and a wellspring of local support for Islamic State.

But as in Sinjar, Iraqi and U.S. military leaders have credited several rounds of coalition airstrikes with crippling Islamic State enough to open a door for a final, major assault.

The coalition has pummeled the group's positions in and around Ramadi in recent weeks, culminating in a series of six strikes on Monday night.

As many as 800 to 1,000 Islamic State fighters remained in Ramadi just two weeks ago, Col. Warren said. Most of them, he said, had been killed in the interim by a combination of Iraqi ground soldiers and coalition airstrikes.

U.S. military officials in Baghdad said the Iraqis have also benefited from an American shipment of about 2,000 antitank rockets this past summer.

The Iraqi military has used the rockets to destroy Islamic State suicide car bombers. It was Islamic State's aggressive use of bomb-laden armored trucks that allowed them to easily rout Iraq's army from Ramadi in May.