Shiite militias converge on Ramadi

BAGHDAD: Shiite militia groups converged on Ramadi Monday to help Iraqi security forces wrest the city back from Islamic State fighters who seized it in a deadly three-day blitz.

The effective loss of the capital of Iraq’s largest province was Baghdad’s worst military setback since it started clawing back land from the terrorists late last year.
Days after a rare message from IS supremo Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi urging mass mobilization, the group came close to also seizing the heritage site of Palmyra in Syria, but the army pinned the militants back.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi, the United States and the leadership of the Sunni province of Anbar had been reluctant to deploy Iranian-backed groups in Ramadi.
They favored developing local forces, but militia leaders said Monday the past few days had proved the government could not afford to do without the Popular Mobilization Units (Hashed Al-Shaabi), an umbrella for militia groups and volunteer fighters.
Hadi Al-Ameri, a key figure in Hashed Al-Shaabi and the leader of the Badr paramilitary group, argued Anbar’s leaders should have taken up his offer sooner.
Various militias announced they had units already in Anbar — including around the cities of Fallujah and in Habbaniyah — ready to close in on Ramadi and engage the city’s new masters.
Ramadi, which lies 100 km west of Baghdad, effectively fell to IS when beleaguered Iraqi security forces pulled out from their last bases.
Militants likely killed up to 500 Iraqi civilians and soldiers and forced 8,000 people to flee from their homes as they captured the city.
Since Friday, when the battle for the city entered its final stages, “we estimate that 500 people have been killed, both civilians and military,” said a spokesman for the Anbar provincial government, Muhannad Haimour.
Some 8,000 people fled the city, Haimour said. It was not immediately clear how many people remain in Ramadi — once a city of 850,000 that has been draining population for months amid fighting with the extremists besieging it.
Bodies, some charred, were strewn in the streets or tossed into the Euphrates river, said Naeem Al-Gauoud, a leader from the Sunni tribes that fought against IS in Ramadi. Ramadi’s streets were deserted Monday, with only few people venturing out of their homes to look for food, according to two residents reached by telephone.
The militants, meanwhile, were storming the homes of policemen and pro-government tribesmen, particularly those from the large Al Bu Alwan tribe, of whom they detained about 30, the residents said.
The militants went door-to-door with lists of alleged pro-government collaborators. Homes and stores owned by a pro-government Sunni militia known as the Sahwa were looted or torched.