Iraqi Army presses assault against ISIS in Fallujah

Smoke billows on the horizon as Iraqi military forces prepare for an offensive into Fallujah to retake the city from ISIS militants in Iraq. (Photo: AP)

The Iraqi Army stormed to the southern edge of Fallujah under US air support on Monday and captured a police station inside the city limits, launching a direct assault to retake one of the main strongholds of ISIS militants.

Explosions and gunfire were ripping throu-gh Naimiya, a district of Fallujah on its southern outskirts. An elite military unit, the Rapid Response Team, seized the district’s police station on Monday, state television reported.

The battle for Fallujah is shaping up to be one of the biggest ever fought against ISIS, in the city where US forces waged the heaviest battles of their 2003-2011 occupation against the Sunni Muslim militant group’s precursors.

Fallujah is ISIS’ closest bastion to Baghdad, and believed to be the base from which the group has plotted an escalating campaign of suicide bombings against Shia civilians and government targets inside the capital. The Iraqi Army laun-ched its operation to recover Fallujah a week ago, first by tightening a six-month-old siege around the city 50 km west of Baghdad.

Fallujah, in the heartland of Sunni Muslim tribes who resent the Shia-led government in Baghdad, was the first Iraqi city to fall to ISIS in January 2014. Mont-hs later, the group overran wide areas of the north and west of Iraq, declaring a caliphate including parts of neighboring Syria.

On Monday, Army units advanced to the city’s southern entrance, “steadily advancing” under air cover from a US-led coalition helping to fight against the militants, according to a military statement read out on state TV.

Meanwhile, a US-backed alliance of Syrian militia was widening an offensive against ISIS near its de facto capital of Raqqa, targeting an area where the group controls a disused air base, a monitoring group and a Kurdish official said on Monday.

In Aleppo, Turkey’s military killed at least 28 ISIS militants on Sunday in retaliation for the latest attacks against a Turkish border town.