IS militants seize government headquarters in Iraq’s Ramadi

Islamic State militants raised their black flag over the local government headquarters in the Iraqi city of Ramadi on Friday and claimed victory through mosque loudspeakers after overrunning most of the western provincial capital. If Ramadi were to fall, it would be the first major city seized by the insurgents in Iraq since security forces and paramilitary groups began pushing them back last year. The insurgents attacked Ramadi overnight using six suicide car bombs to reach the city center, where the Anbar provincial government compound is located, police sources said.

The city is undergoing vicious attack by Daesh [the Arabic acronym for IS], and we are in dire need of any kind of assistance.

Sabah Karhout, head of Anbar’s provincial council

The IS group captured the nearby city of Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in January 2014, months before its main sweep across northern and western Iraq. U.S. troops saw some of the heaviest fighting of the eight-year Iraq intervention in Anbar, and Ramadi was a major insurgent stronghold. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its allies have conducted 24 airstrikes since early Thursday targeting Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, the Combined Joint Task Force carrying out the operations said.

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