HUNDREDS OF CIVILIANS FLEE FALLUJAH
50,000 still trapped as simultaneous strikes target IS bastion
FALLUJAH: Hundreds of people fled the Fallujah area as forces pressed simultaneous offensives on the Iraqi city and on another of the Islamic State group’s key bastions in Syria.
An estimated 50,000 civilians remained trapped in Fallujah city however, as well as twice that number along Syria’s border with Turkey as a result of an IS sweep near Aleppo.
The US-led coalition claimed it killed a key IS commander for the Fallujah area, although it was not clear when.
“We’ve killed more than 70 enemy fighters, including Maher Al-Bilawi, who is the commander of ISIL (IS) forces in Fallujah,” coalition spokesman Steve Warren said.
Warren said the IS commander was killed two days ago while an Iraqi officer and a local official had reported his death last week.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi forces on May 22 and 23 launched an offensive to retake Fallujah, one of only two major Iraqi cities still controlled by IS, the other being Mosul.
IS fighters holed up in Fallujah are believed to number around 1,000 and while the myriad forces involved in the operation have moved closer, none have yet entered the city proper.
Fallujah is one of IS’s most important bastions.
It was the first Iraqi city to fall out of government control in January 2014 and was the scene a decade earlier of some of the worst fighting US forces had seen since the Vietnam war.
The city has been surrounded by pro-government forces for months and concern has been mounting among humanitarian groups that the population was being deliberately starved.
“The situation inside Fallujah is getting critical by the day,” said Nasr Muflahi, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Iraq director.
Despite plans before the operation for safe corridors, few civilians have managed to flee the Fallujah battle in recent days. The biggest group slipped out on Friday.
“Our forces evacuated 460 people ... most of them women and children,” said police Lieutenant General Raed Shakir Jawdat.
IS “gave us food that only animals would eat”, Umm Omar, who was accompanied by more than 10 members of her family, said.