Speaking to AFP from the edge of the city’s Shuhada neighborhood, Lt. Gen. Abdel-Wahab al-Saadi said the operation to retake one of most emblematic bastions for Daesh (also known as ISIS and ISIL) was progressing well.
“Daesh wanted the battle to take place outside the city but we have moved in, and retaken all this area in eight days,” he said, standing on rooftop overlooking Fallujah’s southern neighborhoods.
“Our troops are here,” he said pointing on his tablet computer to spots along one of the main streets in southern Fallujah. “That’s 3.1 kilometers from the main official building in the center.”
“We’ll be there, in the very center, in days. Days, not weeks,” he said.
“Fallujah is a very symbolic place for Daesh ... but the battle is not different from other ones and when they are trapped, they try to run away just like they did before,” Saadi said.
Led by the elite counter-terrorism service (CTS), Iraq’s best trained and most seasoned fighting unit, the Iraqi army entered Fallujah on May 30 in a major offensive that began a week earlier.
In January 2014, Fallujah, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, became the first Iraqi city to fall under the control of the terrorists, six months before they declared a caliphate over territory seized in Iraq and Syria.