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  Before Mosul, Falluja battle awaits Army

Before Mosul, Falluja battle awaits Army

Published : Jan 1, 2016, 5:40 am IST
Updated : Jan 1, 2016, 5:40 am IST

Iraqi forces may face a big battle near Baghdad before they can try to retake the Islamic State (ISIS) stronghold of Mosul: Falluja, a long-time bastion of Sunni jihadists sitting at the western gates

Iraqi forces may face a big battle near Baghdad before they can try to retake the Islamic State (ISIS) stronghold of Mosul: Falluja, a long-time bastion of Sunni jihadists sitting at the western gates of the capital.

The government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and the US-led coalition backing it have been cagey so far in plans for Falluja, which lies between Baghdad and Ramadi, the capital of the western Anbar province that the Iraqi military recaptured this week from the militants.

Falluja was the first Iraqi city to fall to the men of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in January 2014, six month before the group that emerged from Al Qaeda swept through a third of Iraqi territory and large parts of neighbouring Syria.

Abadi, in a speech on Monday declaring victory in Ramadi, said the Army would head next to Mosul, the biggest urban centre under ISIS control. He said the northern city’s capture would mark the end of the “caliphate” proclaimed from the city’s main mosque in June 2014.

But with many other areas still held by the ISIS in western and northern Iraq, the authorities have not made clear what path they intend to take to Mosul, 400 km north of Baghdad. “The government will need to control Falluja before Mosul,” said Jabbar al-Yawar, secretary general of the peshmerga, the forces of the Kurdish regional government fighting the ISIS in northern Iraq, in an interview to al-Hadath TV.

Daily military statements mention airstrikes and attacks by the Iraqi Army and the international coalition in and around Falluja, a city with a pre-war population of around 300,000 located 70 km west of the capital.

But there has been no indication if and when a battle will be launched to take the city, which Baghdad-based analyst Hisham al-Hashimi said contains around 1,000 ISIS fighters.

“There’s a military leadership; there’s planning and a military vision,” Brigadier-General Yahya Rasool, spokesman for the joint operations command said on Thursday. “If a battle starts to liberate the centre of Falluja, Falluja itself or any other area, we will announce it officially.”

US Army Captain Chance McCraw, a coalition intelligence officer, said the Iraqis were still working on plans for what to do after retaking Ramadi.

“I’m not going to tell you when they’re going to push out there (towards Falluja) but they’re going to push them out of all of Iraq. So if they’re in Iraq, they’re going to get pushed out eventually,” he told reporters in Baghdad on Wednesday.

About 3,000 families remaining in Falluja could be used as human shields, said the analyst Hashimi, who has worked with the Iraqi government. Around 70,000 families have taken refuge in camps around Baghdad.

Location: Iraq, Baghdad