Iraqi forces battle Islamic State in Ramadi
Offensive aims to retake neighborhood; airstrike reported to kill 4 in family
BAGHDAD — Iraqi soldiers backed by Sunni fighters began an operation Saturday to retake a section of the city of Ramadi seized by Islamic State militants, an official and residents said.
The fighting focused on Ramadi’s eastern Sijariya neighborhood, which the extremist group said it captured Friday. An official with the Anbar provincial council described intense fighting there Saturday morning that included mortar fire from both sides. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief journalists.
Eyewitnesses there, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of re-
prisals, corroborated his account.
Meanwhile, residents in the town of Hit, in Anbar, said civilians were killed by an airstrike on a house. The strike, which eyewitnesses said took place just after noon prayers Saturday, purportedly killed a family of four, including two children. It was not immediately clear which country was behind the strike.
Police said two bombings around Baghdad killed eight people and wounded 21. Hospital officials confirmed the casualties. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists. There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the bombings.
The Islamic State group has been trying to seize Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, for months now. Sunni militants, including the group’s fighters, seized parts of it in January.
The Anbar official also said Islamic State fighters lined up and shot several men Friday from the al-Bu Fahd tribe, which is taking part in the fight against the militant group.
Islamic State group fighters have killed more than 200 men, women and children from Anbar’s Sunni Al Bu Nimr tribe in recent weeks, apparently in revenge for the tribe’s siding with Iraqi security forces and, in the past, with U.S. forces.
Earlier this month, an American advisory mission visited Anbar’s al-Asad air base, searching for potential training locations for fighters battling the Islamic State group, which holds a third of both Iraq and Syria. The move is part of a U.S. plan to train Iraqi forces and Sunni tribesmen, reminiscent of the Sunni Awakening movement that confronted al-Qaida in Iraq starting in 2006. The U.S. launched airstrikes in Iraq on Aug. 8, and several countries have since joined in an effort to reinforce Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces fighting the Islamic State group. The U.S. also is part of a coalition of Arab allies that launched strikes in Syria.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Saturday that the U.S.-led airstrikes have killed 785 militants of the extremist Islamic State group in Syria. It said the strikes also have killed 72 militants of Syria’s al-Qaida’s affiliate, the Nusra Front.
The activist group, which observers think provides the conflict’s most accurate death tolls, said the U.S.-led strikes also killed 52 civilians, including eight women and five children.
Activists say Syria’s civil war has killed more than 200,000 people.
4-HOUR TALK IN TURKEY
In Turkey, Vice President Joe Biden and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan emerged from a nearly fourhour meeting Saturday, offering no indication that the U.S. and Turkey had bridged their differences about how to deal with Islamic State fighters or Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Biden announced $135 million in new U.S. aid for Syrian civilians, including some for Turkey, which is hosting 1.6 million refugees, but the two leaders didn’t offer details about how they were working together to ramp up Ankara’s role in the international coalition’s fight against the Islamic State in neighboring Syria and Iraq.
In statements to reporters after their meeting, each lauded the six-decade relationship between the two NATO allies.
But there was no mention of Turkey’s Incirlik air base, which the U.S. wants to use to launch strikes against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Biden only briefly mentioned Turkey’s plans to train and equip moderate Syrian opposition fighters, but no details were disclosed. Neither mentioned Turkey’s call for a no-fly zone, or safe zone, in northern Syria, where Western-backed opposition fighters would be safe from Assad’s air power.
Biden said the two spoke at considerable detail about Iraq and Syria, and that he believes the U.S.-Turkey relationship is “as strong as it has ever been.”
“We need Turkey, and I think that Turkey believes that it needs us as well,” he said.
Erdogan said he and Biden talked about Iraq and Syria as well as other global issues, and that they plan to continue to hold such discussions.
“We gladly saw that we have the same opinion with the United States on most of the issues we discussed. We confirmed our decision to improve our cooperation. Most importantly, as being two NATO allies, we confirmed once more our commitment to each other’s defense and security,” said Erdogan.
A senior administration official said the meeting was not void of progress and that both leaders achieved better clarity about the needs of both countries. The official said the U.S. and Turkey agree that the Islamic State needs to be defeated, that moderate Syrian forces need to be trained, including at one base in Turkey, and that a political transition is needed in Syria that does not include Assad. The official was not authorized to publicly disclose details of the meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity.
About 300 people protested Biden’s visit to Turkey, chanting: “Biden get out. This country is ours.” The demonstration occurred on the European side of Istanbul, as Biden was on his way to a meeting with Erdogan on the Asian side of the city.
Biden didn’t see the protest, which was organized by the Youth Association of Turkey, the same group that roughed up three U.S. Navy sailors while chanting “Yankee, go home!” about a week ago in Istanbul. The protesters threw red paint at the sailors and briefly succeeded in putting white sacks over their heads. The servicemen, who were not hurt, were from the USS Ross, a guided-missile destroyer then docked on an inlet of the Bosphorus Strait in the Black Sea.
BRITISH HOSTAGE ON VIDEO
In the United Kingdom, a government said it is studying a video released by the Islamic State purporting to show British hostage John Cantlie describing a failed rescue attempt by U.S. forces.
In a nine-minute film, the 43-year-old photojournalist claims a rescue effort in July failed because the hostages had been moved to a different location, the BBC reported Saturday. Cantlie, held captive since 2012, has previously appeared in videos posted by the Islamic State criticizing the policy of the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East.
“We’re aware of a further video and we’re analyzing its contents,” a Foreign Office spokesman in London said in a statement by phone.
Cantlie says in the video that he accepted “long ago” that his fate is likely to be the same as his “cellmates,” the BBC reported.
Islamic State said earlier this month that it had beheaded Peter “Abdul-Rahman” Kassig, an American Muslim convert and aid worker. Previous videos have shown the executions of British hostages David Haines and Alan Henning, and U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.
In September, Britain joined the U.S.-led coalition of European and Arab allies in carrying out military strikes against Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria.