Start of a phase of urban combat : Iraqi forces enter ISIS bastion of Fallujah

Iraqi forces entered the ISIS bastion of Fallujah from three directions on Monday in a new phase of the operation to recapture the city, commanders said.

"We started early this morning our operations to break into Fallujah," Sabah al-Norman, a spokesman for Iraq's elite counterterrorism service, told AFP.

The week-old operation has so far focused on retaking villages and rural areas around Fallujah, which lies just 50 kilometers west of Baghdad.

"I won't tell you hours but the breach of Fallujah will happen very soon," Hadi al-Ameri, a senior commander in the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force, told Iraqi television Saturday.

• CTS's involvement will mark the start of a phase of urban combat in a city where US forces in 2004 fought some of their toughest battles since the Vietnam War.

The militants were also under pressure from Kurdish fighters east of their northern Iraqi stronghold Mosul and from US-backed Kurdish-led fighters in Syria.

Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region on Sunday announced the launch of a pre-dawn offensive involving 5,500 Peshmerga fighters to retake an area on the road between its capital Arbil and Mosul.

"This is one of the many shaping operations expected to increase pressure on ISIL (ISIS) in and around Mosul in preparation for an eventual assault on the city," the Kurdistan Region Security Council said in a statement.

Ten hours into the operation, which was launched a day after a wave of 12 coalition air strikes in the area, Kurdish forces had fully retaken three villages, it said.

In Syria, Kurdish rebels from the People's Protection Units (YPG) allied to Arab fighters and backed both on the ground and in the air by the US-led coalition, were targeting Raqa, ISIS's de-facto Syrian capital.

ISIS countered in both countries where they declared their "caliphate" in 2014, attacking non-jihadist rebels in Syria as well as the Iraqi town of Heet, which the army recaptured just last month.

"An attack by Daesh (ISIS) terrorists on several parts of Heet was thwarted... Now the whole area is under control," the Joint Operations Command said in a statement...
  [AFP -alarabiya.net]
30/5/16
--
-
Related:

• Les forces irakiennes sont entrées dans la ville de Falloujah, aux mains des jihadistes de l'EI...

• Fallujah, Iraq: 50,000 civilians are trapped inside the city. The jihadists trying to kill those who attempt to flee.

• Iraqi MP: Many civilians killed in Fallujah operation

• 50,000 Iraqi civilians ‘at great risk’ in Fallujah

• The Iraqi Prime Minister announced an operation to liberate Fallujah from ISIS

• Some 80,000 people newly displaced by conflict in Iraq since March