Alwaght- The Iraqi Ministry of Defense announced on Saturday, that the country’s Anti-Terrorism forces have stormed the city of Fallujah from the southern axis.
In a brief statement, the Iraqi Defense Ministry said, “Today the Anti-Terrorism forces stormed the city of Fallujah from the southern axis and retook al-Nuaimiya area.”
Earlier Saturday the commander of Baghdad Operations Major General Abdel Amir al-Shimari announced, that the security forces stormed the center of al-Saqlawiyah vicinity and raised the Iraqi flag over it.
Iraqi forces are moving with caution in the operation to completely eliminate ISIS elements in Fallujah to avoid killing civilians trapped in the city. ISIS terrorists have been using several hundred families as “human shields”.
Meanwhile, Iraq’s military says a top commander of the ISIS Takfiri terrorist group was killed in an airstrike northwest of the embattled city of Fallujah.
The Friday aerial attack was conducted against an ISIS hideout in Saqlawiyah city, about five kilometers (three miles) northwest of Fallujah, in the western Anbar province, Arabic-language al-Sumaria news website reported.
Lieutenant General Abdul Amir al-Shammari, a commander for the Baghdad Operations Command, said in a statement that the airstrike killed Abu Bashir al-Sudani, adding that the Iraqi forces were only some 600 meters (1970 feet) away from the center of the city.
Fallujah, which saw some of the heaviest fighting of the US military invasion between 2003 and 2011, was the first city in Iraq to fall to ISIS.
The Takfiri extremists seized control of Fallujah in January 2014, six months before they swept across northern and western Iraq.
