Iraqi army storms IS stronghold Falluja
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THE Iraqi army stormed to the southern edge of Falluja under US air support yesterday and captured a police station inside the city limits, launching a direct assault to retake one of the main strongholds of Islamic State militants.
A TV crew about 1.5 kilometers from the edge of the city said explosions and gunfire were ripping through Naimiya, a largely rural district of Falluja on its southern outskirts.
An elite military unit, the Rapid Response Team, seized the district’s police station at midday, state TV reported.
The unit advanced another mile northward, stopping about 500 meters from the al-Shuhada district, the southeastern part of the city’s main built-up area, army officers said.
The battle for Falluja is shaping up to be one of the biggest yet fought against Islamic State, in the city where US forces waged the heaviest battles of their 2003-2011 occupation against the Sunni Muslim militant group’s precursors.
Falluja is Islamic State’s closest bastion to Baghdad, and believed to be the base from which the group has plotted an escalating campaign of suicide bombings against Shiite civilians and government targets inside the capital.
As government forces pressed their onslaught, suicide bombers driving a car and a motorcycle blew themselves up in the capital. Along with another bomb planted in a car, they killed more than 20 people and injured more than 50 in three districts of Baghdad, police and medical sources said.
Separately, Kurdish security forces announced advances against Islamic State in northern Iraq, capturing villages from militants outside Mosul, the biggest city under militant control.
The Iraqi army launched its operation to recover Falluja a week ago, first by tightening a six-month-old siege around the city 50 kilometers west of Baghdad.
Falluja, in the heartland of Sunni Muslim tribes who resent the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, was the first Iraqi city to fall to Islamic State in January 2014. Months later, the group overran wide areas of the north and west of Iraq, declaring a caliphate including parts of neighboring Syria.
Yesterday, army units were “steadily advancing” to Falluja’s southern outskirts under air cover from a US-led coalition helping to fight the militants, according to a military statement read out on state TV.
The latest offensive is causing alarm among international aid organizations over the humanitarian situation in the city, where more than 50,000 civilians are trapped with limited access to water, food and health care.
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