Iraqi army closes in on Daesh militants near Fallujah

FALLUJAH, Iraq — Iraq's army sought on Monday to eliminate Daesh militants holed up in farmland west of Fallujah to keep them from launching a counterattack on the city, a day after the government declared victory over the militants there.

Backed by air strikes from a US-led coalition, Iraqi artillery bombarded targets as troops closed in on up to 150 insurgents in areas along the southern bank of the Euphrates River, an army officer participating in the operation said.

The government's recapture of Fallujah, an hour's drive west of the capital, was part of a broader offensive against the extremist group, which seized large swathes of Iraq's north and west in 2014 but is now being driven back by an array of forces.

Fallujah's recovery lent fresh momentum to the campaign to recapture Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city and the biggest anywhere in the extremists’ self-proclaimed “caliphate”. Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi has pledged to retake Mosul this year.

Colonel Ahmed Al Saidi, who participated in Monday's advance, said ground forces were moving cautiously to avoid triggering roadside bombs planted by Daesh.

The holed-up militants "have two options: either they surrender or they get killed. We want to prevent them catching their breath and attacking our forces with car bombs," he said.

Saidi said radio intercepts suggested the militants were running out of ammunition and he expected them to fold shortly.

The insurgents mounted limited resistance to Iraqi forces earlier this month inside Fallujah before scattering after some commanders abandoned the fight, according to Iraqi officials.

A Pentagon spokesman told reporters in Washington that while there were still pockets of resistance, Fallujah had been cleared and was under the control of the Iraqi government.

Captain Jeff Davis said the US-led coalition had carried out more than a 100 air strikes on Fallujah since the ground operation started.

"We certainly know that there will be significant challenges that they'll face as they go through and back clear and remove that city of booby traps, IED's," Davis said, referring to improvised bombs.

US Secretary of Defence Ash Carter, said in a statement that the Fallujah operation had been "a significant challenge for the ISF and for the coalition" and the task of looking after the displaced residents of Fallujah was still ahead.

"It is also essential to complete the investigations the government of Iraq has launched to address alleged abuses of civilians," Carter said.

The military’s swift advance surprised many who anticipated a protracted battle for Fallujah, a bastion of Sunni Muslim insurgency where some of the fiercest fighting of the US occupation of Iraq took place in 2004 against Daesh’s forerunner, Al Qaeda.

Assessing the damage

Control of Fallujah is now shared between the army, elite countreterrorism forces and federal police. Some fighters from Shiite Muslim militias, which have held several outlying areas for months, are also present inside Fallujah proper.

The army, along with local police, are expected to take full control in the coming days, a military source said.

Central districts of Fallujah, which in January 2014 became the first Iraqi city to fall to Daesh, were mostly quiet on Monday as bomb-removal operations along roadways and in buildings began in earnest.

Military sources said the city had been heavily mined by Daesh but the extent of damage to infrastructure and property could not be assessed easily.

Dozens of buildings across the city have been set on fire, something government forces blamed mostly on fleeing militants. At least one building, a converted prison in Nazal district, was torched after Daesh was pushed out.

In video published a week ago showing the cages where the militants had allegedly detained Iraqi security officials, the building appeared fully intact. When a Reuters team visited the same site on Monday, soot covered the floor and most rooms were stained black from smoke.

A spokesman for Iraq’s federal police acknowledged the arson, but said his forces no longer controlled the area. He suggested the destruction was carried out by residents angry about their missing relatives, though most civilians had fled the city by the time the prison was discovered.

Some officials estimate that as little as 10 per cent of Fallujah had been destroyed, comparing that favourably with Ramadi and Sinjar, cities recaptured from Daesh last year but widely devastated in the process.

A spokesman for the governor of Anbar province, where Fallujah is located, said the worst damage had occurred in the southern industrial district where Daesh had assembled car bombs used in attacks in Baghdad.

More than 85,000 residents displaced by the fighting in the past month are waiting in government-run camps to return home; at least twice as many people fled Fallujah during Daesh rule.

The World Food Programme on Monday expressed alarm at “the extremely dire conditions” of civilians who have overwhelmed the capacity of aid groups.