Iraqi troops and allied tribesmen killed 57 Islamist militants in Anbar province today, the defence ministry said, in advance of a possible assault on the Sunni Muslim rebel-held city of Falluja.
There was no independent verification of the toll among the militants, said to be members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a jihadi group also fighting in the civil war in neighbouring Syria.
The militants and other Sunni groups angered by the Shi’ite Muslim-led Baghdad government overran Falluja and parts of the nearby city of Ramadi in the western province of Anbar on January 1st.
The ministry said most of the 57 militants had been killed in the outskirts of Ramadi, but gave few details.
Prime minister Nuri al-Maliki has held back from an all-out assault on Falluja to give time for a negotiated way out of the standoff, but mediation efforts appear to have failed.
Troops intensified shelling of Falluja late yesterday and security officials said a ground assault would follow soon.
“The assault has to take place on Falluja, sooner or later,” said a top security official directly involved in dealing with the stand-off. “The time for talking ran out.”
The official said the army was tightening its siege of the city and would continue shelling it for at least three days to weaken militant positions and drive remaining residents out.
“We will not enter as long as there are civilians inside,” the official told Reuters. “We want them to leave, and they will leave under the pressure of daily bombardment.”
A resident of Falluja said many families had moved to the city’s western districts because other areas were being shelled, and the army was fighting militants in the north.
Mr Maliki has appealed for international support and weapons to fight al Qaeda, although critics say his own policies towards Iraq's once-dominant Sunni community are at least partly to blame for reviving an insurgency that had climaxed in 2006-07.
Last year was Iraq's bloodiest since 2008, according to the United Nations, and the violence monitoring group Iraq Body Count has said more than 1,000 people were killed in January alone.
Reuters