A spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve said Tuesday that it’s “too soon to tell” when Iraqi fighters will gain complete control of Ramadi, even as lawmakers and others praised Iraq’s recent progress in its effort to retake the city that the Islamic State seized in May.
“This is going to take a while because any house could be rigged to blow,” Col. Steve Warren told reporters Tuesday at the Pentagon via video teleconference from Baghdad.
Iraqi fighters have cleared the majority of the city, but have yet to get to an area to the east of the city center where the Euphrates River bends in a “shark fin” shape. Warren said Islamic State fighters loaded their families into their cars when fighting began in Ramadi and fled to this area.
Even in areas that have been cleared of fighters, booby traps remain. Warren said Islamic State fighters have rigged the city with homemade explosives and captured military equipment made into improved explosive devices that can be triggered with a trip wire or pressure plate. In some cases, entire houses are stuffed with explosives.
Warren was unable to provide an estimate of how many Islamic State fighters remained in the city, but said their capability to launch a serious attack is degraded. However, Iraqi fighters in the city were still fending off counterattacks on Tuesday.
“We don’t think the remaining enemy has the oomph to push the Iraqi Security Forces off their positions,” Warren said. “That said, there have been counterattacks today.”
Earlier this week, officials rallied around a major success in the fight against the Islamic State as Iraqi forces raised an Iraqi flag over a government compound in Ramadi. Reported estimates on Monday suggested that the Iraqis had cleared about 70 percent of the city.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., commended the Iraqi forces for the achievement, but noted that the Islamic State still has a stronghold in other cities that will be more difficult to take.
“No one should understate how much work remains and how much more difficult that work will be than liberating Ramadi. The black flags of ISIL still fly over Mosul, Raqqa and other key parts of Iraq and Syria,” McCain said Monday in a statement.
Warren agreed that there’s still much fighting to be done, even once Iraqi forces win complete control of Ramadi.
“We still have a fight ahead of us. Mosul is different from Ramadi, it’s a big, big, big city, and it’s going to take a lot of effort, it’s going to take more training, it’s going to take more equipment and it’s going to take patience,” he said.
The fight to retake Mosul, which fell into Islamic State control in June 2014, began a year ago and operations there are ongoing, Warren said.
