ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A senior Sunni tribal leader said Saturday that his forces are planning to drive Islamic militants out of the province and “completely liberate the city of Fallujah in the coming days.”
Ahmed Abu Risha said Iraqi troops and Sunni tribes will battle the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) together in a rare joint operation between the military and Sunni Arab fighters.
“Along with the Iraqi army, Anbar’s tribes are determined to launch an attack against ISIS in Fallujah and liberate the city that they have controlled for several months,” Abu Risha told Rudaw by telephone.
“ISIS has a foreign agenda to destroy Iraq,” said Abu Risha.
Abu Risha said the tribes are expecting to defeat the Islamic militants in the early days of their attack on the Sunni provinces of Iraq, but that “they [ISIS] have the support of some countries that are interested in keeping them.”
The tribal leader said ISIS has also managed to recruit many local residents and Iraq’s porous borders have worked to their advantage.
Sunni tribes, armed by the Americans in 2007, played a crucial role in driving Al-Qaeda out of Anbar and tipping the balance in favor of the Iraqi government and US forces. The tribes and Sunni parties have been largely alienated from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government, however, deeply fracturing Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq.
Abu Risha said months of attacks by ISIS and other militant groups have caused enormous damage to Anbar province. There have been reports that ISIS destroyed the homes of Sunni tribal leaders who refused to let the Sunni extremists control the province, and some leaders have been assassinated.
Abu Risha said the Islamic militants in Anbar are targeting local Sunni residents as well as the Iraqi army.
Meanwhile on Saturday health officials in Fallujah said that three people were killed and eight others injured as a result of Iraqi bombardment of residential areas.
“We received three dead bodies this morning of victims who were killed in Iraqi army shelling of Shuhada and Yarmouk neighborhoods,” said Ahmad al-Shami, a doctor at Fallujah hospital.
Government forces have been battling Islamic militants in Fallujah and Ramadi for more than a year. The decision of Sunni tribes, previously known as the Awakening Council, to join the fight could mark a turning point in the war that has been raging between ISIS and government forces in largely Sunni provinces.
ISIS took over large parts of northwestern Iraq after they launched a surprise attack against the Iraqi army in Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, last month.
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