(MENAFN- Arab Times) Islamic State fighters seized the government compound in the city of Ramadi on Friday and edged closer to what would be their biggest victory in Iraq this year, officials said. The loss of the capital of Anbar province, which Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had said would be the next target of government forces after wresting back Tikrit last month, would be a major setback.
The government stressed that Ramadi had not fallen yet and announced that a major counter-offensive was under way as Abadi held an emergency meeting with top security officials. IS has threatened to take control of Ramadi for months, and the breakthrough came after a wide offensive on multiple fronts in the province, including an assault using several suicide car bombs in Ramadi on Thursday. The jihadists seized the government complex at around 2:00 pm (1100 GMT) and raised the black flag, a police officer said, giving them nearly full control over Anbar's capital. IS "now occupies the government centre in Ramadi and has also raised its flag over the police HQ for Anbar", the police major told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The group itself issued a statement saying its fighters broke into the government complex, and blew up the adjacent buildings of Anbar's governorate and the police headquarters. A senior tribal leader in charge of the coordination of local fighters with regular government forces also confirmed the government complex had fallen. "The only (government) forces still fighting are confined to a few pockets in Ramadi but they have no command post any more," Sheikh Hekmat Suleiman told AFP by phone.
Provincial council member Adhal Obeid al-Fahdawi had described the situation as "critical" moments earlier, and said civilians were fleeing the city centre, the second time in a month they have done so following another IS offensive in April. "Families are trying to flee on foot, leaving their cars and homes behind, but most areas around Ramadi are under IS control," said Sheikh Jabbar Adjadj al-Assafi, a tribal leader.
The IS said earlier that it had launched several attacks on army positions east of Ramadi, including one by a British suicide bomber it named as Abu Musa al-Britani. "Another vehicle driven by our brother martyr Abu Khobayb al-Shami attacked the Al-Majd police station near Al- Haq mosque in Ramadi, followed by an assault that killed who was left," the group said in its daily radio broadcast on Friday.
It also claimed to have killed 13 Iraqi soldiers in an attack on a hill east of Ramadi and executed 14 Sunni tribal fighters when it took over the central neighbourhood of Jamiya. Iraqi security sources and IS said the town of Jubbah, about 180 kms (110 miles) northwest of Baghdad, had also been seized by jihadists. A tribal leader said the town, near the large Al-Asad airbase where several hundred US advisers are stationed, had been left insufficiently protected. "The situation in Ramadi is dangerous but the city has not fallen and the battles against the Daesh criminal organisation is still ongoing," Anbar Governor Sohaib al-Rawi said on Twitter.
An interior ministry statement said "national forces began a counter-attack to clear the areas infiltrated by IS terrorist gangs in Ramadi". It said reinforcements had been sent to the Ramadi front and announced a series of strikes by the Iraqi air force in other parts of the province.
Attacks
Both IS and government officials also reported several attacks since Thursday east of Fallujah, only a few miles from the borders of Baghdad governorate, but their outcome remained unclear. IS named its latest Ramadi operation after Abu Muhannad al-Swaidawi, a top IS leader in Anbar who was killed in a US-led air strike, according to jihadist forums.
The organisation's leader, Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi, broke a six-month silence on Thursday with an audio recording of a speech in which he played up the Anbar battle. The group, which also controls parts of Syria, swept across the Sunni heartland of Iraq last year before proclaiming a "caliphate" and attracting record numbers of foreign fighters. A US-led air campaign launched in August helped the central government in Baghdad and the autonomous Kurds in the north turn the tide on IS. The jihadists have since lost significant ground but still hold Mosul, the country's second city, and Anbar, whose capital lies 100 kms (60 miles) west of Baghdad.
Meanwhile, members of a US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State jihadist group Thursday vowed to stick by global resolutions to refuse to pay ransoms for citizens held hostage by militants, US officials said. The pledge to abide by UN Security Council resolutions came after some 25 members of the coalition Counter-ISIL Finance Group met in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on May 7. A communique issued by the group "rejects the payment or facilitation of ransoms to ISIL, so as to deny ISIL an important source of funds and remove a key incentive for ISIL to engage in further kidnapping or hostage-taking activities," the US Treasury and State Departments said.
The group, co-chaired by Italy, Saudi Arabia and the United States, was set up in Brussels in 2014 as part of US-led efforts to fight the militants also known by the acronym, ISIL. It also urged "private sector partners to adopt or to follow relevant guidelines and best practices for preventing and responding to ISIL kidnappings without paying ransoms." American, Japanese and Jordanian hostages have been among those brutally killed by IS militants after being kidnapped during the group's march across swathes of Iraq and Syria. While the United States has staunchly stuck to its policy of refusing to pay money to win the release of its nationals, arguing that such a move would endanger all Americans, other Western countries are known to have paid large ransoms to free hostages.
The statement backed by 25 nations will give a boost to the US policy, even as the administration of President Barack Obama reviews the stand following sharp criticism, particularly from the hostages' families. "We understand the policy about not paying ransom," Carl Mueller, father of American aid worker Kayla Mueller, 26, who died while after being kidnapped in the Syrian city of Aleppo, said in February. "But on the other hand, any parents out there would understand that you would want anything and everything done to bring your child home.
And we tried. And we asked. But they put policy in front of American citizens' lives." US officials have alleged that IS at one point was one of the world's richest terror groups, raising $2 million a day from the illicit sales of crude from captured oil fields. Since then the US-led coalition has targeted captured oil fields in air-strikes aiming to choke off finances to IS. Ransoms and the sales of plundered cultural treasures were also lucrative money earners for the group which has to ensure vital services for residents in cities it has captured, like the Iraqi second hub of Mosul. "The latest trends in ISIL's exploitation and smuggling of energy resources and cultural property" were also discussed by the working group, the State Department said.
They also discussed "concrete measures" to disrupt the flow of funds to the group. In other news, the UN cultural agency expressed alarm Friday over clashes between Islamic State militants and Syrian government forces near the ancient city of Palmyra - one of the Middle East's most famous UNESCO world heritage sites. UNESCO chief Irina Bokova said Palmyra, famous for its 2,000-year-old ruins, should not become the target of any military activity. She spoke to reporters in Beirut after meeting with Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam. Activist groups such as the Britainbased Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees said government warplanes have been attacking IS positions on the eastern edge of Palmyra. There has also been fighting on the ground, the groups said. On Friday, Syrian state news agency SANA said troops were "chasing" IS fighters in several areas north and east of Palmyra. The Observatory said the fighting near Palmyra on Friday killed three IS fighters and 10 government troops.
The Syrian government has urged the international community to protect Palmyra from IS, which recently destroyed several archaeological sites in neighboring Iraq. Bokova expressed concern over Palmyra, saying "heritage sites should not be used for military purposes." "I appealed yesterday to all parties concerned to protect Palmyra and to leave it outside their military activity," she said. "The site has already suffered four years of conflict," she said in an earlier statement, adding that it "represents an irreplaceable treasure for the Syrian people and for the world." Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria's director- general of antiquities and museums, said the situation Friday is better than the day before, with the army "firmly controlling the city."
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