ON JUNE 18th Iraqi’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, declared that his forces had regained control of Fallujah, a stronghold seized by Islamic State (IS) two-and-a-half years ago that lies just 60km (40 miles) from the capital, Baghdad. Yet the next day the thud of mortars and rockets could still be heard inside the supposedly liberated city, and armoured convoys were still rumbling into the fray. “Daesh is still here,” said Qusay Hamid, an Iraqi special-forces major, using the Arabic acronym for IS as he waited on a sun-baked Fallujah street to move his men into battle near a mosque.
Lieutenant-General Abdul Wahab al-Saadi, dressed in a T-shirt and black trousers, commands the battle from a plastic table on the concrete floor of a construction site that has been turned into an improvised command post. Officers radio back grid co-ordinates to Australian counterparts, who then guide American Hellfire missiles to strike IS positions in the city.
The crash of a rocket fired towards Fallujah from a nearby sector controlled by the Iranian-backed Badr organisation punctuates the roar of fighter jets. Two years into the campaigns...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/28U2Hx1
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