Shiite militia near IS-taken city

Iraqi children, who fled with their families from the city of Ramadi after it was seized by Islamic State militants, gather outside tents at a camp for displaced families Monday in Bzeibez, on the southwestern frontier of Baghdad with Anbar province. Photo: AFP

 A column of Shiite militia fighters arrived at a military base near Ramadi on Monday as Baghdad moved to retake the western Iraqi city that fell to Islamic State militants in the biggest defeat for the government since last summer.

The US-led coalition stepped up air raids against the Islamists, conducting 19 strikes near Ramadi over the past 72 hours at the request of the Iraqi security forces, a coalition spokesman said.

The militia, known as Hashid Shaabi or Popular Mobilization, had been ordered to mobilize after the city, the capital of Anbar province, was overrun on Sunday.

The militiamen give the government far more capability to launch a counterattack, but their arrival could add to sectarian animosity in one of the most violent parts of Iraq.

"Hashid Shaabi forces reached the Habbaniya base and are now on standby," said the head of the Anbar provincial council, Sabah Karhout.

An eyewitness described a long line of armored vehicles and trucks mounted with machine guns and rockets, flying the yellow flags of Kataib Hezbollah, one of the militia factions, heading towards the base.

Spokesmen for militia groups said reconnaissance and planning were underway for the upcoming "battle of Anbar," the vast Euphrates River valley province where the US military fought the biggest battles of its 11-year occupation.

Ramadi is dominated by Sunni Muslims. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi signed off on the deployment of Shiite militias to attempt to seize back the area, a move he had previously resisted for fear of provoking a sectarian backlash.

About 500 people have been killed in the fighting for Ramadi in recent days and between 6,000 and 8,000 have fled, a spokesman for the provincial governor said.

The city's fall marked a major setback for the forces ranged against Islamic State: the US-led coalition and the Iraqi security forces, which have been propped up by Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

It was also a harsh return to reality for Washington, which at the weekend had mounted a successful special forces raid in Syria in which it said it killed an Islamic State leader in charge of the group's black market oil and gas sales, and captured his wife. The Iraqi government and Shiite paramilitaries recaptured former dictator Saddam Hussein's Tigris River home city of Tikrit from Islamic State six weeks ago, the biggest advance since the militants swept through northern Iraq last year. But government forces have had less success in the valley of Iraq's other great river, the Euphrates, west of Baghdad.

IS said that in Ramadi it had seized tanks and killed "dozens of apostates," its description for members of the Iraqi security forces.