Iraqi forces in Fallujah repel IS attack in city’s south

UNHCR spokesperson William Spindler told a news briefing in Geneva on Tuesday (May 31) that around 3,700 people – 624 families – have fled Falluja since the new offensive by Iraqi forces to retake the city began last week, according to figures provided by authorities.

As government forces pressed their onslaught, suicide bombers driving a auto and a motorcycle blew themselves up in the capital.

In divided Aleppo city, 15 people, including two children, were killed in the rebel-controlled eastern neighbourhoods in heavy bombardment on Monday morning, the civil defence said.

The alarm was sounded as Iraq’s military announced it was less that 2 miles from the center of Fallujah, which has been under ISIS control since 2014.

“Iraqi forces entered Fallujah under air cover from the global coalition, the Iraqi air force and army aviation and supported by artillery and tanks”, Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al Saadi told AFP.

“Most people able to get out come from the outskirts of Falluja“.

Falluja was a key hotbed in the insurgency that raged in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and saw two separate large-scale offensives by the U.S. military in 2004 that destroyed much of the city.

The militants holed up in Fallujah are believed to number around 1,000.

Tens of thousands of pro-Iraqi government forces are involved in the assault, backed by US-led coalition airstrikes.

Islamic State has been holding Fallujah since 2014.

Even though the Islamic State still holds Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and the crown jewel of cities under its control, Fallujah’s loss would nevertheless be a significant blow to the extremist group.

Fallujah, which is about 65 kilometers (40 miles) west of Baghdad, is one of the last major IS strongholds in western Iraq.

Besieged or not, David Witty, a retired U.S. army special forces colonel, said he expected IS, a Sunni extremist group, to put up more of a fight than it did for other cities. Shiite militia forces under the government umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces and the federal police lead operations that have taken back 80 percent of the territory around Fallujah, according to Iraqi Maj. That represents most of the targets of their latest advance.

A suicide vehicle bomber struck an outdoor market in the town of Tarmiyah, about 31 miles north of Baghdad, killing seven civilians and three policemen, another police officer said, adding that 24 people were wounded in that bombing.

The worsening security situation in the capital has added to political pressure on Abadi, a member of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority who is trying to hold a ruling coalition together in the face of public protests against an entrenched political class.

“Since December, food has been in short supply, people are relying on expired rice and dried dates, and several starvation-related deaths have been reported“, UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming said. In Sadr City, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed three people and injured nine.

Falluja was a key hotbed in the insurgency that raged in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

He has called for politicians to set aside their differences and rally behind the army during the Falluja offensive.

Washington says Islamic State’s territory is steadily being rolled back both in Iraq and in Syria, where it has lost ground to US -backed, mainly Kurdish insurgents in the north and to the Russian-backed forces of President Bashar al-Assad.