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| Iraq |
| Iraq Army, Tribal Fighters Battle Jihadists in Ramadi |
| 2014-11-30 |
| [AnNahar] Iraqi forces battled Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... (IS) group fighters Saturday in Ramadi, where a fierce jihadist offensive threatens one of the last pockets in Anbar province still under government control. "Fierce fighting pitting security forces and tribal units against IS is taking place in the al-Hoz, Muallimin and Bakr neighborhoods," a police major told Agence La Belle France-Presse. "The festivities have been going on for several hours," he said, without specifying how many casualties the violence had claimed. Al-Hoz district, in the south of the Anbar picturesque provincial capital, fell to IS during the past week of fighting in Ramadi, a large city on the Euphrates 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Baghdad. Sheikh Omar al-Alwani, the leader of one of the Sunni tribes opposing the jihadists and fighting alongside the government in Anbar, said slow military progress was being made. "The army and tribal fighters are advancing slowly in al-Hoz today. They control the entrances to the neighborhood," he told AFP by phone. "There are many booby-traps and we don't have a bomb disposal unit with us so we can only take position in a house once we have tossed a hand grenade in it to see if it is rigged with explosives," he explained. "If the army stays with us, we can claim back the entire neighborhood soon," he said, adding that Iraqi air raids had destroyed IS sniper positions and armored vehicles on Saturday. Police and army officers said that a partial curfew was in place in Ramadi and that reinforcements had been deployed to protect the main government compound in the city. Parts of Ramadi and all of Fallujah, ... the City of Mosques, which might have somthing to do with why it's not called Center of Prosperityor a really nice place to raise your kids... to its east, have been outside government control since the beginning of the year, but much more of Anbar province has since been seized by IS, which spearheaded a sweeping June offensive that overran swathes of Iraq. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |