Ramadi

Iraqi forces secured the southern edge of ISIS stronghold of Fallujah on Sunday, two weeks after the launch of an operation to recapture the city, the Iraqi special forces commander overseeing the operation said.

So complete was the destruction of Ramadi that a local reporter who had visited the city many times hardly recognized it.

After days of mounting expectation, the Iraqi government finally announced a serious offensive to retake the city of Ramadi, the capital of western Iraq’s Anbar Province, from the Islamic State.

The advance of Iraqi forces into the heart of Ramadi, a restive city that fell to the Islamic State (ISIS) earlier this year, in some ways vindicated the U.S.-led coalition’s strategy for rolling back the extremists—but victory has come at a high cost, and the same tactics might not work elsewhere.

A triumphant Iraqi prime minister on Tuesday toured the western city of Ramadi, just a day after government troops routed ISIS extremists from the area and recaptured a key government complex

Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led airstrikes drove Islamic State militants out of the center of Ramadi on Monday and seized the main government complex there, according to military officials, who said insurgents are still dug into pockets of the city west of Baghdad.

ISIS militants are putting up a tough fight in the militant-held city of Ramadi, slowing down the advance of Iraqi forces, a senior Iraqi commander said Sunday, Dec. 27.

Iraqi troops battling the Islamic State group on Tuesday captured a neighborhood on the outskirts of militant-held Ramadi and a provincial operations center to the north of the city, officials said.

After months of sluggish progress, stalled advances, and outright failures, Iraqi troops and militias backed by U.S.-led airstrikes have surrounded the key city of Ramadi and appear poised to launch a new attempt to wrest it from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

In measuring progress in the American-led air war against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, numbers tell one story but results tell another.

Iraqi soldiers backed by Sunni fighters launched a major operation Saturday to retake a section of the city of Ramadi seized by Islamic State group militants, an official and residents said.