FALLUJAH, Iraq – Iraqi commanders said Sunday that they had completely retaken the city of Fallujah after a month-long battle, depriving Islamic State militants of their symbolic stronghold just an hour’s drive from the capital.
There was a celebratory mood in the city as pickup trucks ferried around cheering members of the security forces, who unloaded volleys of bullets into the air in jubilation.
“It’s a hundred percent liberated,” Maj. Gen. Tamer Mohammed Ismail, a commander with Iraqi police’s rapid reaction division, also known as S.W.A.T., said at a makeshift base inside Fallujah.
The Sunni city 45 miles west of Baghdad was the first in Iraq or Syria to be captured by the Islamic State, about 2 1/2 years ago. A quagmire for U.S. service members during the Iraq War, there were expectations that it could be a bloody and drawn-out fight, but the Iraqi military has made quick progress since breaking through defense lines outside the city earlier this month.
The end of the military operation here brings hope for its displaced residents that they will soon be able to return home. Tens of thousands are stranded in miserable conditions in desert camps with little assistance.
But parts of the city, once home to 300,000 people, are still laced with roadside bombs. In the narrow streets of the old-city area, secured earlier Sunday, an officer urged caution as he pointed out a booby trap, its yellow wires leading out of the ground and over the gate into a nearby house.
“Danger explosives,” someone had written on the wall. Ismail said his forces had detonated two booby-trapped houses and 13 roadside bombs on Sunday alone.
While S.W.A.T. and federal police forces focused on the old-city area, Iraq’s special forces stormed the Jolan neighborhood, commanders said.
A U.S.-led coalition has backed the operation with airstrikes.
The actions of the Shiite-led government’s security forces in this “City of Mosques” that is the most important for Sunni Muslims in Iraq have been highly scrutinized.
Given the Sunni concerns, Iraq’s government initially announced that its popular mobilization units – armed groups largely made up of Shiite militias – would not be entering the battle inside the city.
However, forces from the Shiite Badr Organization had been fighting alongside police in recent days, commanders said.
“In the beginning we decided to only support them,” Hadi al-Amiri, a member of the group, said during a visit to the S.W.A.T. base. “But they found that they couldn’t do it alone. Therefore, we entered the city.”
He said that the Popular Mobilization Forces had held back until civilians had left.
Burning houses were the results of the fighting or Islamic State militants burning their bases as they retreated he said.
But plumes of black smoke kept rising into the air in areas under the control of security forces, raising concerns about reprisal attacks.
“An electrical fire,” said one officer, when asked to explain a burning building that hadn’t been alight a few hours before, after Islamic State militants had left the area.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi visited the city on Sunday afternoon, speaking outside its main hospital.
He said that some “sick souls” may have committed violations “here and there” but that they are isolated incidents and unacceptable. He said it was a day for all Iraqis to celebrate.
“We had promised that we would raise the Iraqi flag high in Fallujah, and we have fulfilled this promise, and we will raise it soon in Mosul,” Abadi said as he raised the Iraqi flag. Mosul, about 250 miles northwest of Baghdad, remains the last Iraqi city in the hands of the militants.
Nearly 100 U.S. Marines were killed in their battle against al-Qaida militants in Fallujah 12 years ago.
Iraqi commanders put their rapid progress in Fallujah down to the Islamic State’s weakened state after being besieged by security forces for months and to a growing backlash in the city against the militant group’s rule.
“Iraqi forces have proved that they have the capability to liberate all their land,” Abadi said.
More than 1,800 Islamic State fighters were killed in the offensive, Lt. Gen. Abdelwahab al-Saedi, commander of the Fallujah operation, told state television. That is more than double even the highest estimates provided by security forces for the number of fighters in the city before the operation began.
But some cautioned that completely defeating the Islamic State requires more than just military operations.
“We’ve fought the militants, but we haven’t fought the ideology,” said Brig. Gen. Dawood al-Shammari, another S.W.A.T. commander.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Loveday Morris, Mustafa Salim
