Iraq launches effort to retake IS-held city

Associated Press

BAGHDAD

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the beginning of military operations to retake the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, in a televised address Sunday night.

Iraqi forces are “approaching a moment of great victory” against the Islamic State group, said al-Abadi, who was surrounded by top military commanders from the Ministry of Defense and the country’s elite counterterrorism forces.

However, Iraqi forces are expected to face a complicated fight to push IS out of Fallujah, which is about 40 miles west of Baghdad, and has been under the militants’ control for more than two years.

Asked about the Iraqi announcement on plans to retake Falliujah, the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon did not immediately comment.

During the Iraq War, Fallujah was an insurgent stronghold and the site of the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War. In November 2004, U.S. forces led a coalition attack against several thousand insurgents in Fallujah in which thousands of buildings were destroyed in house-to-house fighting. More than 80 U.S. troops were killed along with an estimated 2,000 insurgents.

Al-Abadi’s announcement comes at a time when Iraqi ground forces backed by U.S.-led coalition air support are gaining territory against IS, most recently in Iraq’s vast western Anbar province.