Islamic State takes over Iraqi city of Ramadi

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Islamic State fighters took over the main government compound in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi on Friday, giving them nearly full control over Anbar’s provincial capital, the group and officials said.

The jihadists seized the government complex at around 2:00 pm (1100 GMT) and raised the IS’s black flag, capping an offensive launched on Thursday, a police officer said.

IS “now occupies the government center in Ramadi and has also raised its flag over the police HQ for Anbar,” the police major told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The group itself issued a statement in which it said its fighters “broke into the Safavid government complex in the center of Ramadi.”

The operation “resulted in the control of it after killing the ‘murtadeen’, then blowing up the adjacent buildings of Anbar’s governorate and the Safavid Anbar police HQ.”

Safavid is a term used by IS in a derogatory way to refer to government forces and “murtadeen” designates Sunni tribal fighters battling alongside the government.

A senior tribal leader in charge of the coordination of local fighters with regular government forces also confirmed the government complex had fallen.

“Daesh has managed to take over the provincial council and they have raised their flag,” Sheikh Hekmat Suleiman told AFP by phone, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

“The only (government) forces still fighting are confined to a few pockets in Ramadi but they have no command post anymore,” he said.

On Monday this week the terror group released an audio message purportedly from its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has not been seen or heard from in months.

The audio message posted on militant websites features a voice that sounds like al-Baghdadi’s exhorting all Muslims to take up arms and fight on behalf of the group’s self-styled caliphate.

The speaker references the Saudi-led air campaign against Shiite rebels in Yemen, which began on March 26, and harshly criticizes the Saudi royal family.

It was not immediately possible to verify whether the voice was al-Baghdadi’s.

At the beginning of the month The Guardian reported that al-Baghdadi has been effectively replaced as head of the jihadist group after suspected spinal injuries sustained in an attack by US forces left him incapacitated.

The Pentagon has acknowledged that it was responsible for the attack, but said it was unaware of al-Baghdadi being one of the casualties.

Al-Baghdadi’s deputy Abu Alaa al-Afari was said to be running the organization’s day-to-day operations.

However, on Wednesday Iraq said that al-Afari and other top Islamic State leaders were targeted in a strike by the US-led coalition.

“Based on accurate intelligence, an airstrike was carried out by the international coalition targeting the number two in the Daesh terrorist organization Abu Alaa al-Afari,” the Ministry of Defense said in a statement.

It was not clear from the statement whether Afari was killed in the strike, which the ministry said targeted a gathering in the Martyrs’ Mosque in Tal Afar’s Al-Ayadiya district.

Reacting to reports that Afari had been killed, the US Central Command overseeing the air war against the IS group, said it had “no information to corroborate these claims.”

“However, we can confirm that coalition aircraft did not strike a mosque as some of the press reporting has alleged,” it said in a statement.

— Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.