Iraqi forces fight back on Anbar frontline

Iraqi forces retook territory from the Islamic State jihadist group east of Ramadi on Saturday, commanders said, in their first counterattack since Anbar’s provincial capital fell a week ago.

A mosaic of anti-IS forces had for days been massing in the Euphrates Valley to ready for an offensive aimed at turning the tide on jihadists.

The May 17 takeover of Ramadi was Baghdad’s worst defeat in almost a year while the capture three days later of the Syrian city of Palmyra positioned IS for a possible drive on Damascus.

Security officials said an operation was launched early Saturday to retake Husaybah, a town 4.5 miles east of Ramadi in the Euphrates Valley, that IS had seized earlier in the week.

“The Husaybah area is now under full control and the forces are now advancing to liberate neighboring Jweibah,” a police colonel told AFP from the front.

Meanwhile Islamic State fighters broke into the museum of the ancient town of Palmyra, though its artifacts have been removed and are safe, a Syrian official said Saturday.

The Islamic State group captured Palmyra in the central province of Homs on Wednesday, raising concerns around the world they would destroy priceless, 2,000-year-old temples, tombs and colonnades located in the town’s south. A picture circulated on Twitter accounts of supporters of the group show the black flag used by the extremists raised over the town’s hilltop castle, a structure hundreds of years old.

Maamoun Abdulkarim, the head of the Antiquities and Museums Department in Damascus, told The Associated Press that militants entered the museum in the town’s center Friday afternoon, locked the doors and left behind their own guards. He said that the artifacts earlier had been moved away to safety.

“We feel proud as all the museum’s contents were taken to safe areas,” he told reporters. But Abdulkarim warned that the Islamic State group’s control of the town remains a danger to its archaeological sites. The group has destroyed several sites in Syria and Iraq, and also has had a lucrative business by excavating and selling artifacts on the black market.

In Ramadi swift action was seen as essential to prevent IS from laying booby traps across the city, which would make any advance more risky and complicated.

But government and allied forces were also keen to prevent further losses as IS used its momentum after seizing Ramadi to take more land to the east of the city.

“What happened in Anbar is very similar to what happened last year in Diyala, Mosul and Salaheddin,” said Ahmed al-Assadi, spokesman of the Hashed al-Shaabi (popular mobilization).

He was referring to the debacle of security forces when IS-led fighters swept across Iraq’s Sunni Arab heartland in June last year, bringing Iraq to the brink of collapse.

Some Iraqi forces were criticized for avoiding battle during the fall of Ramadi, which led Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to call in the Hashed al-Shaabi, which has some well-trained units but mainly adds numbers and determination.

He and Washington had opposed the mass deployment in the Sunni province of Anbar of militia groups with direct ties to Iran and a dubious human rights record.

However, the strategy of US-led coalition air strikes while the security apparatus gets revamped has failed to keep up with the pace of IS advances.

“At this time, the Hashed are Abadi’s best bet. I don’t think he has many options,” said Ayham Kamel, director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Eurasia Group.

Washington tried to remain upbeat after the loss of Ramadi and Palmyra, playing down the IS advance as a tactical “setback” and denying the US-led coalition was “losing.”

The jihadists, who now control roughly half of Syria, reinforced their self-declared transfrontier “caliphate” by seizing Syria’s Al-Tanaf crossing on the Damascus-Baghdad highway late Thursday.

Fabrice Balanche, a French expert on Syria, said “IS now dominates central Syria, a crossroads of primary importance” that could allow it to advance towards the capital and third city Homs.

The IS advance in both countries forced tens of thousands of civilians from their homes, sparking concern among humanitarian agencies.

The fall of Ramadi displaced at least 55,000 people, who join the more than 2.8 million people made homeless by fighting nationwide since the start of 2014.

The UN Security Council on Friday expressed deep concern for thousands of civilians trapped across the border in Palmyra.

The international community has also voiced alarm over the famed ancient city’s archaeological sites.

UNESCO chief Irina Bokova called the 1st and 2nd Century Palmyra ruins “the birthplace of human civilisation”, adding: “It belongs to the whole of humanity and I think everyone today should be worried about what is happening.”

IS on Friday also demonstrated its ability to strike beyond the heart of its “caliphate” when it claimed the suicide bombing of a Shiite mosque in Saudi Arabia.

According to government figures, the attack during weekly prayers in Qatif, in eastern Saudi Arabia, killed 21 people and left 81 wounded.

In Palmyra IS fighters hunted down Syrian government troops and loyalists in the newly captured town Friday, shooting or beheading them in public as a warning, and imposing their strict interpretation of Islam, activists said.

The purge, which relied mostly on informants, was aimed at solidifying the extremists’ grip on the strategic town.

It also was part of a campaign to win the support of President Bashar Assad’s opponents, who have suffered from a government crackdown in the town and surrounding province in the last four years of Syria’s civil war.

 

 

IS commanders also fanned out to Palmyra’s mosques to deliver sermons during Friday’s weekly communal prayers. Mosques were packed after fighters on Thursday had urged people to attend and told women to cover their faces.

 

Fighters were carrying out a bloody, door-to-door search to find and kill fugitive soldiers and known Assad loyalists, several activists said.

Prompted by the IS warnings not to provide shelter, some residents came forward with information about troops who had tried to melt into the population when the jihadists stormed into the town, said another activist.