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The Daesh terrorists seized areas around Ramadi, west of Baghdad, on Wednesday in an apparent attempt at a diversion from offensives on its last Iraqi footholds but were swiftly defeated, security sources said.
The terrorists briefly occupied three areas near the city, which is the capital of Anbar Province, the sources said, AFP wrote.
But after several hours of heavy fighting in which there were deaths on both sides, all three areas were retaken.
“The security forces and the tribes retook control of the Al-Tash, Majr and Kilometer Seven districts,” provincial police chief Major General Hadi Razij Kassar told reporters.
“All the Daesh members were killed,” he added.
The operation was likely to have been an attempt to divert the security forces from an offensive they launched last week against the terrorists’ last two footholds in Iraq, one of them a series of towns further up the Euphrates Valley from Ramadi.
A general who asked not to be identified said government forces had killed 20 terrorists.
A military source in Ramadi hospital said two security personnel were killed and 18 civilians wounded.
“A curfew has been imposed on the city of Ramadi and its surroundings to prevent any security breaches,” the general said.
Troops and paramilitaries retook full control of Ramadi from Daesh in February 2016 but are still battling to clear the terrorists from elsewhere in Anbar Province.
Last week saw the launch of twin offensives against the terrorists in the Euphrates Valley near the Syrian border and around the northern town of Hawija.
Daesh is now under attack in all of its remaining bastions in both the Iraqi and the Syrian arms of the so-called caliphate it declared in 2014.
Since the terrorists’ defeat in Iraq’s second city Mosul in July after a nine-month offensive, the territory they still hold has dwindled fast, with stronghold after stronghold coming under assault on both sides of the border.
Their onetime Syrian bastion Raqqa, long a byword for gruesome atrocities, including public executions, is now on the verge of falling to US-backed forces.
Daesh is also under attack by Syrian government forces around the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor and in the central provinces of Hama and Homs.
In Iraq, troops and paramilitaries have retaken the town of Shirqat in their drive on Hawija.
They have also recaptured a string of villages around the town of Anna in their push up the Euphrates Valley toward the Syrian border.