Iraqi forces were facing heavy resistance on Tuesday as they pushed toward the center of a town held by Islamic State militants in western Anbar province, commanders at the scene said.
The small town of Hit — which lies along the Euphrates River in a valley in the sprawling desert of Anbar — is strategically important as it sits along an IS supply line that links territory controlled by the extremist Sunni group in Iraq and in Syria. Through the line, IS ferries fighters and supplies from Syria into Iraq.
Iraqi troops entered Hit on Monday, under cover of heavy airstrikes and a week after launching the operation to retake the town. Their advance has been stalled as tens of thousands of civilians got trapped in the fighting. A political crisis in Baghdad as well as poor weather conditions further slowed the push.
Iraqi commanders overseeing the operation said Tuesday the speed of the advance into Hit will depend on the fighting.
Gen. Husham al-Jabri said Iraqi counterterrorism forces were hit with a barrage of mortars and a string of suicide car bombings on Tuesday morning as they pushed into Hit from the north. He didn’t give casualty figures.
“Our speed depends on the resistance we’re facing,” said al-Jabri, adding that they want to keep our casualties in the lowest level.”
At a makeshift base on Hit’s southern edge, Iraqi troops at the front line could be heard saying over a handheld radio to commanders that the “mortars are coming down like rain.”
While Iraq’s elite counterterrorism forces are some of the country’s most capable ground forces, they still depend heavily of U.S. led coalition air strikes to clear territory.
On Sunday, a rocket attack killed two Iraqi troops and wounded four others as they entered the city’s northern edge. Since Friday, al-Jabri said his forces have been hit with more than 10 suicide car bombs.
The Hit offensive comes after a string of territorial victories for Iraqi forces over the past six months. Ramadi, the Anbar provincial capital, was declared fully “liberated” by Iraqi and coalition officials in February. Coalition officials estimate IS has lost more than 40 percent of the territory it held in Iraq after the summer of 2014.
Iraq’s counterterrorism forces estimate more than 20,000 civilians remain trapped inside Hit.
