Falluja a ‘tough nut to crack’ — Iraqi finance minister
BAGHDAD: Islamic State is putting up a tough fight in Falluja, said Iraqi Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, expecting that the capture of the city by the Iraqi army will take time.
“Falluja is a tough nut to crack,” he told Reuters in an interview on Thursday evening.
“Daesh are holding the population as hostages, not allowing them to escape, and they are putting up a tough fight there,” he added, referring to the militant group by one of its Arabic acronyms.
Falluja, located 50 kilometres west of Baghdad, has been a bastion of the Sunni insurgency that fought both the US occupation of Iraq and the Shi’ite-led Baghdad government.
Islamic State fighters raised their flag there in January 2014 before sweeping through much of Iraq’s north and west, declaring a ‘caliphate’ several months later, from Mosul.
“Daesh are entrenched, Falluja has been a problem for the new Iraq from the beginning; before it was the base of al- Qaeda, of the insurgents,” said Zebari.
“Nobody can give you a definitive time when Falluja will be cleared of Daesh,” he added.
“Mainly because of the resistance, because of the IEDs (improvised explosive devices), because of the tunnels” the militants have dug to move without being detected.
The army started the offensive on May 23, with the backing of Shi’ite militias known as Popular Mobilisation Forces ( PMF) and air support from the US-led coalition.
Prime Minister Haider alAbadi on Wednesday said the army slowed down the pace of the offensive because of fears for the safety of tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the city with limited access to water, food and healthcare.
“The security forces, the PMF have made significant progress but really to storm the center of Falluja I think will take time,” Zebari said.
“We should not declare victory prematurely.”
Falluja would be the third major city in Iraq recaptured by the government after former dictator Saddam Hussein’s home town Tikrit and Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s vast western Anbar province. — Reuters