Iraqi forces advance into centre of IS-held Ramadi

Iraqi security forces advanced on Tuesday into the centre of Ramadi city, which has been under the control of Islamic State group militants since May, a security official said.

"We went into the centre of Ramadi from several fronts and we began purging residential areas," said Sabah al-Noman, spokesman of the Iraqi counter-terrorism service.

The fighting, al-Noman said, is currently focused on neighbourhoods around a key government complex, with ground fighters receiving support from the air force.

"The city will be cleared in the coming 72 hours," he added.

Leaflets were dropped on Sunday by the Iraqi Air Force, which asked residents to leave within the next three days. The leaflets included instructions for the proper identification documents residents should have with them, in addition to marking out safe routes.

According to Iraqi intelligence, around 250 to 300 Islamic State fighters are embedded in Ramadi, capital of Western Anbar province which is 100km west of Baghdad.

The military operation to recapture Ramadi by the Iraqi army, supported by US coalition air strikes, began early last month. Prior to that, the Iraqi army tried to cut off all supply lines to the city.

Ramadi, the provincial capital of the largest governorate in Iraq Anbar, was overtaken by the Islamic State militant group in May earlier this year. 500 people, including fighters and civilians were killed in the three-day battle as IS used a series of rigged car bombs and suicide attacks to take over Ramadi.

An estimated 40,000 residents fled in the direction of Baghdad and southern cities at the time.

IS has lost several key towns in Iraq since Baghdad and the autonomous Kurdish region started fighting back following IS’s offensive launched 18 months ago.

The United States has been urging on its Iraqi allies to launch a counter offensive since the summer, but efforts to retake the city were repeatedly delayed. 

Iraq’s defence minister Khaled al-Obeidi insisted that the reasons for delay was to “avoid casualties among our forces and also civilian casualties”.

The Shia-dominated Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitary forces were heavily involved in the battles that led to the recapture of towns such as Tikrit and Baiji, but have remained on the fringes in the battle for Ramadi - as have other fighters with the Shia-dominated Popular Mobilisation Units who have been excluded from the battle due to sectarian sensitivity, Middle East Eye reported last month.

Retaking the city which saw some of the deadliest fighting against US troops a decade ago would be the Iraqi federal forces' most significant victory so far.

Meanwhile, conflicting reports surrounding the fate of around 1,200 civilians from Anbar have surfaced this month. According to member of Anbar’s provincial council Taha Abdel-Ghani, civilians were kidnapped once they reached the Razazah checkpoint that leads to Karbala, 50 kilometres south of Fallujah.

“These kidnapping operations first began when the military operations by Iraqi forces against IS started two months ago, and have escalated gradually,” Taha told the Saudi daily Asharq al-Awsat.

Taha said that an armed group belonging to the Popular Mobilisation Units was waiting for and kidnapping families fleeing from cities under IS control such as Ramadi and Amiriyet al-Fallujah, who were making their way to refugee camps in the city of al-Habbaniya and to other towns in the south of the Euphrates River.

“Families are separated and then the men are taken away to an unknown location, and according to the information the council received, at least three women have also been kidnapped from the same checkpoint.”

However, the Iraqi forces maintain that they have not verified cases of kidnapping, and called on the Anbar officials to present evidence regarding this matter in order to open up investigations.

“We have not recorded a single kidnapping case,” said Yahyah Rasoul, the spokesperson for the joint operation command.

A local security official in Anbar, who wished to remain annonymous, told Middle East Eye that one Shia group is suspected of carrying out the kidnappings.

"We believe that these families were arrested by Huzballa-Iraq Brigades along the last five months. They mainly detain young men and those with names such as Omar, Abu Baker or Othman," he said referring to names popular with Sunni Muslims.

"We have no idea about the exact number but they have been arresting families fleeing from Ramadi to investigate them and we heard that they were releasing some of them from time to time."

"To be honest, no one has solid information to confirm the number of detained people or whether they were released or not, but we believe that Huzballa-Iraq Brigades is an informal security force so we consider this as kidnapping,"