BAGHDAD // Iraqi forces are heading to Fallujah to launch an operation aimed at retaking the city from the ISIL extremist group, the prime minister’s spokesman said on Sunday.
“Your sons the heroic fighters in the armed forces are ready to achieve a new victory ... they are going to the city of Fallujah to clear it from the Daesh gang,” Saad Al Hadithi said.
He did not say when an assault on the extremist bastion would begin.
State TV reported on Sunday that the army had asked residents to get ready to leave Fallujah ahead of the operation.
Families who could not leave should raise white flags to mark their location in the city just west of Baghdad, the army’s media unit said, according to the TV channel.
The army “is asking the citizens that are still in Fallujah to be prepared to leave the city through secured routes that will be announced later”, the channel said.
Fallujah, only 50 kilometres west of Baghdad, was the first Iraqi city to fall to ISIL in January 2014.Fallujah and Mosul, the capital of the northern province of Nineveh, are the last two major cities ISIL still holds in Iraq.
Fallujah is almost completely surrounded by Iraqi forces and a coalition of Shiite militias known as Hashid Shaabi who have regained significant ground in the Anbar province in recent months, including its capital Ramadi further up the Euphrates River valley.
The city was badly damaged in two offensives by US forces against Al Qaeda insurgents in 2004.
Also on Sunday, Iraqi security forces installed additional blast walls and layers of razor wire around the Green Zone after the compound that houses most Iraqi ministries and foreign embassies was breached for a second time.
The new security precautions came two days after hundreds of protesters pushed past police and military guards and stormed the prime minister’s office and the parliament building. Many protesters were supporters of powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada Al Sadr, who has led months of demonstrations and sit-ins calling for government reforms.
Security forces fired tear gas and live ammunition on the protesters Friday in an attempt to disperse the crowds, leaving two people dead and more than 100 wounded. Al Sadr has condemned the use of force against “peaceful” demonstrations and vowed to continue to support the “revolution” against the government.
The additional Green Zone security has caused massive traffic jams in the Iraqi capital, home to more than seven million people.
* Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Associated Press