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| People leave their hometown Ramadi, 70 miles (115 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 16, 2015. Clashes between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants pressing their offensive for Ramadi, the capital of western Anbar province, has forced more than 2,000 families to flee from their homes in the area, an Iraqi official said Thursday. The Sunni militants' push on Ramadi, launched Wednesday when the Islamic State group captured three villages on the city's eastern outskirts, has become the most significant threat so far to the provincial capital of Anbar. |
BAGHDAD (AP)
-- More than 2,000 families have fled the Iraqi city of Ramadi with
little more than the clothes on their backs, officials said Thursday, as
the Islamic State group closed in on the capital of western Anbar
province, clashing with Iraqi troops and turning it into a ghost town.
The
extremist group, which has controlled the nearby city of Fallujah for
more than a year, captured three villages on Ramadi's eastern outskirts
on Wednesday. The advance is widely seen as a counteroffensive after the
Islamic State group lost the city of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown,
earlier this month.
Hundreds of U.S. troops
are training Iraqi forces at a military base west of Ramadi, but a U.S.
military official said the fighting had no impact on the U.S. soldiers
there, and that there were no plans to withdraw them.
The
fleeing Ramadi residents were settling in the southern and western
suburbs of Baghdad, and tents, food and other aid were being sent to
them, said Sattar Nowruz, an official of the Ministry of Migration and
the Displaced.
The ministry was assessing the
situation with the provincial government in order "to provide the
displaced people, who are undergoing difficult conditions, with better
services and help," Nowruz said.
Sporadic
clashes were still underway Thursday, according to security officials in
Ramadi. Government forces control the city center, while the IS group
has had a presence in the suburbs and outskirts for months. They
described Ramadi as a ghost town, with empty streets and closed shops.
Video
obtained by The Associated Press showed plumes of thick, black smoke
billowing above the city as fighter jets pounded militant targets. On
the city outskirts, displaced residents frantically tried to make their
way out amid the heavy bombardment.
U.S.-led
coalition airstrikes targeted the IS group in Sjariyah, Albu-Ghanim and
Soufiya, the three villages the extremists captured Wednesday, the
officials added. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were
not allowed to talk to the media.
Anbar's
deputy governor, Faleh al-Issawi, described the situation in Ramadi as
"catastrophic" and urged the central government to send in
reinforcements.
"We urge the Baghdad
government to supply us immediately with troops and weapons in order to
help us prevent the city from falling into the hands of the IS group,"
he told the Associated Press in a telephone interview.
The
spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general, Stephane Dujarric, said
access to the city was limited but humanitarian workers were trying to
verify the reports of fleeing residents. Prior to the current bout of
fighting, some 400,000 Iraqis were already displaced, including 60,000
in Ramadi district, according to the International Organization for
Migration.
Al-Bayan, the Islamic State group's
English-language radio station, claimed IS fighters had seized control
of at least six areas and most of a seventh to the east of Ramadi since
Wednesday, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors
militant websites.
American troops fought some
of their bloodiest battles in Anbar during the eight-year U.S.
intervention, when Fallujah and Ramadi were strongholds of al-Qaida in
Iraq, a precursor to the IS group. Fallujah was the first Iraqi city to
fall to the militants, in January 2014.
Iraqi
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who was visiting Washington on
Wednesday, made no mention of the events in Ramadi. Instead he spoke
optimistically about recruiting Sunni tribal fighters to battle the
extremists, saying about 5,000 such fighters in Anbar had signed up and
received light weapons.
The IS-run Al-Bayan
station also reported that an attempt by Iraqi troops to advance on the
Beiji oil refinery in Salahuddin province, about 250 kilometers (115
miles) north of Baghdad, was pushed back and that fighters "positioned
themselves in multiple parts of the refinery after taking control of
most of it," according to SITE.
Iraqi
officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the fighting
around Beiji. On Monday, Oil Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said that Iraqi
forces, backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, had repelled an IS
attack on Beiji over the weekend.
Meanwhile, a
senior U.S. military official told The Associated Press that there were
no plans to evacuate U.S. troops from the Ain al-Asad air base, about
110 kilometers (70 miles) west of Ramadi - and stressed that the current
fighting around Ramadi had no impact on the base. He spoke on condition
of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Since January, hundreds of U.S. forces have been training Iraqi troops at the base.
