(MENAFN- Arab Times) Iraqi forces said they thwarted a third attempt by Islamic State militants to break through their defensive lines east of the city of Ramadi overnight on Thursday. Police and pro-government Sunni fighters exchanged mortar and sniper fire with the insurgents across the new frontline in Husaiba al-Sharqiya, about halfway between Ramadi and a base where a counter-offensive to retake the city is being prepared. Ramadi fell to the militants on Sunday in the most significant setback for Iraqi security forces in nearly a year, calling into question the US-led strategy to "degrade and destroy" the Islamist group.
Gains
The militants are now seeking to consolidate their gains in the surrounding province of Anbar by pushing east towards the Habbaniya base where Iraqi security forces and Shi'ite paramilitaries are massing. "DAESH is desperately trying to breach our defences but this is impossible now," Police major Khalid al- Fahdawi said, referring to Islamic State. "We have absorbed the shock and more reinforcements have reached the frontline. They tried overnight to breach our defences but they failed. Army helicopters were waiting for them." Habbaniya is one of only a few remaining pockets of government-held territory in Anbar, and lies between Ramadi and the town of Falluja, which has been controlled by Islamic State for more than a year. Local officials say the militants want to join up the two towns and overrun the other remaining government holdouts, strung out along the Euphrates river valley and the border with Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Setback
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama has described the loss of key Iraqi territory to Islamic State as a tactical setback, while insisting the war against the jihadist group is not being lost. "I don't think we're losing," Obama said in an interview with news magazine The Atlantic published Thursday, days after the Iraqi city of Ramadi was overrun.
"There's no doubt there was a tactical setback, although Ramadi had been vulnerable for a very long time," he said. Since August 2014, on Obama's orders, a US-led coalition has hit more than 6,000 targets in Iraq and Syria with airstrikes, with the aim of degrading the Islamic State group. Obama has refused to return US combat troops to Iraq, following a long brutal war after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But the rout in Ramadi has called into question US strategy and the credibility of Iraq's central government.
Obama blamed it on a lack of training and reinforcement of Iraq's own security forces. "They have been there essentially for a year without sufficient reinforcements," he said. "But it is indicative that the training of Iraqi security forces, the fortifications, the command-and-control systems are not happening fast enough in Anbar, in the Sunni parts of the country."
Ramadi is in Iraq's minority Sunni heartland, a short drive from the capital Baghdad. Even with sustained US airpower, many observers are skeptical the Iraqi army can win the war against the well trained and highly motivated Islamic State group. Both Washington and Baghdad have reluctantly begun to advocate the use of ethnic and religious paramilitaries to bolster the fight. The United States has pushed Iraq's central government to enlist Sunni tribesmen in Ramadi's Anbar province, something the Shiite-led government has been reluctant to do. "There's no doubt that in the Sunni area we're going to have to ramp up not just training, but also commitment, and we better get Sunni tribes more activated than they currently have been."
Elsewhere, Russia offered visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi military and other aid on Thursday to help push back Islamic State militants who have made further sweeping gains in both Iraq and Syria this week. The advances by IS, which captured the Iraqi city of Ramadi last weekend and on Thursday was tightening its grip on the historic city of Palmyra in neighbouring Syria, have exposed the shortcomings of Iraq's army and the limitations of US air strikes. In going ahead with his visit to Moscow despite the worsening security crisis, Abadi said he had wanted to underline the importance of his country's ties with Russia, adding that he had disregarded "certain forces" advising him to cancel the trip. "We are expanding cooperation in the area of military technology," Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the start of talks with Abadi in the Kremlin, hailing Iraq as an "old and reliable partner in the region".
Destruction
In other news, Islamic State group jihadists seized Syria's Palmyra on Thursday, as UNESCO warned that the destruction of the ancient city would be "an enormous loss to humanity". The capture of Palmyra, a 2,000-yearold metropolis, reportedly leaves more than half of Syria under IS control and comes days after the group also expanded its control in Iraq. Palmyra "is the birthplace of human civilisation. It belongs to the whole of humanity and I think everyone today should be worried about what is happening," UNESCO chief Irina Bokova said on Thursday. IS fighters had spread out through Palmyra, including at the archaeological site in the city's southwest, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Syrian state media said loyalist troops withdrew after "a large number of IS terrorists entered the city"
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