If Ramadi is captured, it will be the second major city after Tikrit to be retaken from ISIS in Iraq. It would provide a major psychological boost to Iraqi security forces.”In the coming days will be announced the good news of the complete liberation of Ramadi," Iraqia TV cited the officer as saying.
The push to retake the capital of Iraq’s western province of Anbar was launched overnight on Tuesday, with Sabah al-Noman, spokesman of the Iraqi counter-terrorism service, saying, “The city will be cleared in the coming 72 hours,” AFP reported.
“We went into the center of Ramadi from several fronts and we began purging residential areas,” he added.
Iraq's armed forces began advancing on Tuesday on the last district held by the militants in the centre of Ramadi, a Sunni Muslim city on the River Euphrates some 100 km west of Baghdad that they captured in May, Reuters reports.
The country’s elite counter-terrorism force is leading the operation, which is also joined by the Shia dominated Hashid al shaabi volunteer group of fighters.
The government forces have tightened their encirclement of the city last month, predominantly Sunni and surrounded the terrorists inside it to cut off communications between them and the organization strongholds in Anbar and other areas in neighboring Syria.
The Iraqi troops, backed by fighters from tribal and raids of the international coalition are moving towards the main government complex, where they are expected to face attacks of snipers and suicide bombers.
Iraqi pro-government forces take position in al-Aramil area, south of the Anbar province's capital Ramadi, during military operations on December 22, 2015. Iraqi security forces advanced into the centre of the city for a final push aimed at retaking the city they lost to the ISIS terrorists group in May 2015. AFP
Sources say that even on Tuesday afternoon, government troops retook al-Thabat and al-Aramel neighborhoods, as entered al-Malaab and Baker regions and and al-Davajen south of Ramadi.
Sources in the leadership of the Iraqi army operations Anbar, told the BBC that engineers made a temporary bridges over the Euphrates River, which runs north and west of the center of Ramadi, located 90 km west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
Earlier, Iraqi security forces, backed by fighters from allied Popular Mobilization units, made advances on the outskirts of Ramadi, liberating a number of neighborhoods and flushing out terrorists from the areas.
Iraq’s Summeriya news channel said on Tuesday that the forces carried out successive rounds of shelling against the positions of Daesh in the central district of al-Zobbat.
Daesh terrorists also suffered a major setback in Husaybah, on the eastern outskirts of Ramadi, with a commander of the Iraqi quick reaction forces, identified as Mohammad Ismaeil, saying that over a dozen terrorists were killed in an operation there.
Iraqi military sources also said that they had liberated the al-Jarayeshi neighborhood in northern Ramadi, saying at least nine Daesh militants were killed in the operation in the area.
Iraq’s al-Forat agency also said that the military and pro-government forces had managed to push back terrorists from the districts of al-Aramel.