(MENAFN- Arab Times) A column of 3,000 Shi'ite militia fighters arrived at a military base near Ramadi on Monday as Baghdad moved to retake the western Iraqi city that has fallen to Islamic State militants in the biggest defeat for the government since mid-2014. Setting the stage for renewed fighting over the city, Islamic State militants advanced in armoured vehicles from Ramadi towards the base where the Shi'ite paramilitaries were massing for a counteroffensive, witnesses and a military officer said. At the same time, US-led warplanes stepped up raids against the Islamists, conducting 19 strikes near Ramadi over the past 72 hours at the request of the Iraqi security forces, a coalition spokesman said.
The Shi'ite militia, known as Hashid Shaabi or Popular Mobilisation, was ordered to mobilise after the city, the capital of Anbar province, was overrun on Sunday. The militiamen give the government far more capability to launch a counterattack, but their arrival could add to sectarian animosity in one of the most violent parts of Iraq. "Hashid Shaabi forces reached the Habbaniya base and are now on standby," said the head of the Anbar provincial council, Sabah Karhout.
They were fully equipped and highly capable, the council said. An eyewitness described a long line of armoured vehicles and trucks mounted with machine guns and rockets, flying the yellow flags of Kataib Hezbollah, one of the militia factions, heading towards the base about 30 kms (20 miles) from Ramadi. Spokesmen for militia groups said reconnaissance and planning were underway for the upcoming "battle of Anbar", the vast Euphrates River valley province where the US military fought the biggest battles of its 11-year occupation. Ramadi is dominated by Sunni Muslims. Prime Minister Haider al- Abadi signed off on the deployment of Shi'ite militias to attempt to seize back the area, a move he had previously resisted for fear of provoking a sectarian backlash.
About 500 people have been killed in the fighting for Ramadi in recent days and up to 8,000 have fled, a spokesman for the provincial governor said. Islamic State said it had seized tanks and killed "dozens of apostates", its description for members of the Iraqi security forces. An eyewitness in Ramadi said bodies of policemen and soldiers lay in almost every street, with burnt-out military vehicles nearby. The city's fall marked a major setback for the forces ranged against Islamic State: the US-led coalition and the Iraqi security forces, which have been propped up by Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias. It was also a harsh return to reality for Washington, which at the weekend had mounted a special forces raid in Syria in which it said it killed an Islamic State leader in charge of the group's black market oil and gas sales, and captured his wife.
US Secretary of State John Kerry expressed confidence that the takeover of Ramadi would be reversed in the coming weeks. Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior Iranian official, said Tehran was ready to help confront Islamic State, and he was certain the city would be "liberated". Islamic State, which emerged as an offshoot of al-Qaeda, controls large parts of Iraq and Syria in a self-proclaimed caliphate where it has carried out mass killings of members of religious minorities and beheaded hostages. A senior Israeli intelligence official said that before coalition forces began operations against the group, its revenues were about $65 million a month, more than 90 percent of which came from oil and the rest from taxes and ransom money. Since then, monthly revenues had fallen to about $20 million, of which about 70 percent is from oil and the rest from taxes and ransom.
Seized
Elsewhere, the Islamic State jihadist group seized two gas fields Monday northeast of Syria's ancient Palmyra, a day after firing rockets into the city and killing five people, a monitor said. The Al-Hail and Arak gas fields, 40 and 25 kms (25 and 15 miles) respectively from Palmyra, were vital for the regime's generation of electricity for areas under its control, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Fierce clashes have rocked Palmyra's outskirts since IS launched an offensive on May 13 to capture the 2,000-year-old world heritage site nicknamed "the pearl of the desert". Since then, at least 364 people, including combatants from both sides and 62 civilians, have been killed in the battle for the ancient city.
On Saturday, the jihadists seized most of the city's north, but were pushed out by government troops less than 24 hours later. "The military situation is under control in the city, but the clashes are ongoing north and northwest of it," said Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province where Palmyra is located. "At least five civilians, including two children, were killed Sunday night when IS fired rockets on numerous neighbourhoods in Tadmur," the Observatory said, using the Arabic name for the city. "Everyone is holed up at home," Khalil al-Hariri, head of the local museum, told AFP by phone from Palmyra. "People are afraid of going out." Meanwhile, heavy clashes between Syria's army and insurgents erupted around a military base south of Idlib city on Monday as part of a wider battle for control of the northwestern province, Syrian state television and a group monitoring the war said. The Mastouma base is one of the last major army strongholds in a province controlled by a range of insurgent groups including al-Qaeda's Syrian wing, the Nusra Front, and the Islamist Ahrar al- Sham movement, fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. Army units "inflicted great losses" on armed groups in battles to the north and around Mastouma, Syrian state television reported, citing a military source
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