Iraqi commander says Fallujah ‘100 percent liberated’ from ISIS
FALLUJAH, Iraq — Iraqi commanders said Sunday that they had completely retaken the city of Fallujah after a monthlong battle, depriving Islamic State militants of their symbolic stronghold just an hour’s drive from the capital.
There was a celebratory mood in the city as pickup trucks ferried around cheering members of the security forces, who unloaded volleys of bullets into the air in jubilation.
“It’s a hundred percent liberated,” Maj. Gen. Tamer Mohammed Ismail, a commander with Iraqi police’s rapid reaction division, also known as S.W.A.T., said at a makeshift base inside Fallujah.
The Sunni city 45 miles west of Baghdad was the first in Iraq or Syria to be captured by the Islamic State, about 2½ years ago. A quagmire for U.S. service members during the Iraq War, there were expectations that it could be a bloody and drawn-out fight, but the Iraqi military has made quick progress since breaking through defense lines outside the city earlier this month.
The end of the military operation here brings hope for its displaced residents that they will soon be able to return home. Tens of thousands are stranded in miserable conditions in desert camps with little assistance.
But parts of the city, once home to 300,000 people, are still laced with roadside bombs. In the narrow streets of the old-city area, secured earlier Sunday, an officer urged caution as he pointed out a booby trap, its yellow wires leading out of the ground and over the gate into a nearby house.
“Danger explosives,” someone had written on the wall. Ismail said his forces had detonated two booby-trapped houses and 13 roadside bombs on Sunday alone.
While S.W.A.T. and federal police forces focused on the old-city area, Iraq’s special forces stormed the Jolan neighborhood, commanders said.
A U.S.-led coalition has backed the operation with airstrikes.