Iraqis drown fleeing Fallujah
US- backed Syrian fighters advance on ISIS bastion
Baghdad/ Beirut, June 5: Fighters battling to retake Fallujah from the ISIS said on Sunday they had the Iraqi city almost completely encircled, as civilians risked their lives trying to flee.
At least four people drowned and nine were missing after trying to cross the Euphrates river to escape the ISIS stronghold city just west of Baghdad, medics and officials said.
The drowned bodies of two children, a women and an older man were taken to a hospital in Ameriyat Fallujah, a town downstream under government control, a local official said. The police said it was looking for nine other people believed to have been on the same boat.
About 50,000 civilians live in Fallujah, 50 km from Baghdad, with limited access to water, food and healthcare, according to a UN estimate.
A leader of the Iranbacked Shia coalition taking part in the offensive said the only side of Fallujah that remained to be secured by pro-Baghdad forces was part of the western bank ofthe Euphrates.
“We are now at the gates of Falluja,” Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy leader of the Popular Mobilisation Force, told a
In Aleppo, nearly 40 strikes hit rebelheld areas on Sunday in some of the heaviest recent raids by Russian and Syrian government warplanes, the residents said
press conference broadcast on state TV.
Meanwhile, US- backed Syrian fighters advancing on ISIS in the strategic northern town of Manbij have progressed to within five kilometres of the jihadist bastion, a monitor said on Sunday.
Supported by airstrikes by the US- led coalition battling ISIS in Syria and Iraq, the Syrian Democratic Forces ( SDF) alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias launched an assault last week on Manbij.
Additionally, US fighter jets on Saturday launched a second day of airstrikes against ISIS the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, according to a US Navy official.
In Aleppo, nearly 40 strikes hit rebel- held areas on Sunday in some of the heaviest recent raids by Russian and Syrian government warplanes, the residents and a monitor said.