Iraqi government forces backed by U.S. airstrikes and advisers pushed Islamic State militants out of agricultural areas outside of Fallujah on Monday as they launched a military offensive to recapture the city from the extremists.
(FOX)- The U.S. is supporting an Iraqi military operation to retake Fallujah, the first city to fall to the Islamic State, with airstrikes and is advising the Iraqis at two operation centers in Baghdad and Taqaddum, an American military spokesman based in Baghdad told Fox News.
There are reports of Iranian-backed Shiite militias — whose forces are located on the outskirts of town — participating in the Fallujah operation, but Col. Steve Warren said the U.S. military will not support those forces.
“We are not going to drop bombs in support of the Shiite militias,” he told Fox News by phone.
Warren estimated that there are between 500 and 1,000 ISIS fighters in Fallujah, along with 50,000 civilians.
The city, located about 40 miles west of Baghdad, has been under the militants’ control since January 2014. Since May 17, U.S. airstrikes have destroyed 21 ISIS targets in Fallujah, Warren said.
The U.S. support for the Iraqi military will mirror recent operations that pushed ISIS out of the western town of Rutbah — near Iraq’s border with Jordan — and Hit and Ramadi, which are also in Iraq’s Anbar Province, according to Warren.
Following a string of bombings killing hundreds of Iraqis in Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad, the Iraqi government put the operation to clear ISIS from Fallujah ahead of the one to recapture Mosul, located roughly 250 miles north of Baghdad.
The commander of the Fallujah operation, Lt. General Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, could not say how long the offensive would take, citing terrain, the number of civilians in the city and bombs planted by the militants. Al-Saadi added that the first phase aims to surround and bomb ISIS positions.