IRAQIS ENTER FALLUJAH, CHOKE OFF ISIL’S ISIL’S HOLD
Conditions erode for trapped residents as clampdown tightens
“We are tightening the siege on the militants and advancing carefully.” Yahiya Rasul, Joint Operation Command
Iraqi military and militia forces rolled into this war-battered city Monday, capturing a police station and advancing the crucial campaign to drive Islamic State militants from one of their last major Iraqi strongholds.
“Our forces are still fighting in three directions in Fallujah,” said Yahiya Rasul, spokesman of the Joint Operation Command. “The fight is intense.” Rasul said the push into the city was tentative as soldiers worked to clear mines and traps. “We are tightening the siege on the militants and advancing carefully,” he said.
The government views capturing the Sunni-dominated city 35 miles from the capital of Baghdad as key to stopping deadly terror attacks. Suicide bombers blew themselves up in three districts in Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 24 people and injuring dozens.
Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al- Saadi, commander of the offensive, said troops entered the city backed by air cover from the U.S.-led military coalition. The United States provides extensive support for Iraq’s military, including arms, surveillance, intelligence and advisers.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a televised speech to parliament that the “current phase” of the battle could be completed in two days.
Iraqi forces initially surrounded Fallujah more than a week ago, cutting off the Islamic State from supplies and reinforcements after taking much of the region around the city’s center.
Fallujah was the first city to fall to the militants when they swept across northern and western Iraq in 2014, bent on building a fundamentalist Sunni caliphate from a wide strip of Iraq and Syria. Islamic State fortunes waned recently, and Fallujah and Mosul are the only major Iraqi cities still un- der the militants’ control.
Iraq’s government has been under political pressure from Sunni leaders to liberate Fallujah, where tens of thousands of people, many of them Sunnis, still live despite years of fighting. Recently, there have been reports of civilians starving in the city, which has increasingly been cut off from the rest of the country.
Abu Mohammed, 24, an optician in Erbil, says his aunt and her family are trapped in the city, with little to eat and no electricity or water. “Living conditions are so miserable,” Mohammed said.
“People cannot go to markets, and when they do, the prices are increasing,” he said.