Iraqi Sunni fighters battling Islamic State militants alongside government forces fire their weapons on the outskirts of the Baiji oil refinery yesterday.

AFP/Baghdad

Iraq yesterday rejected accusations by the US defence chief that its security forces dodged battle in Ramadi and lack the will to fight the Islamic State group.
Pentagon chief Ashton Carter argued that the May 17 fall of Ramadi, the worst defeat Baghdad has suffered in almost a year, could have been avoided.
“We have an issue with the will of the Iraqis to fight ISIL and defend themselves,” he told CNN on Sunday, using an acronym for the militant group.
Washington has been one of Baghdad’s key partners in the war to reclaim the ground lost to IS last year and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi expressed disbelief at Carter’s stinging comments.
“I’m surprised why he said that. I mean, he was very supportive of Iraq. I am sure he was fed with the wrong information,” Abadi told the BBC.
A senior Iranian general involved in the fight against IS hit out, saying Washington had failed to help Iraqi forces in Ramadi despite its military presence at the Al Asad air base in the same province.
“How can you be in that country under the pretext of protecting the Iraqis and do nothing? This is no more than being an accomplice in a plot,” said Qassem Suleimani, the Revolutionary Guards’ commander of foreign operations.
Iran has military advisers in Iraq and Syria and provides financial and military support to the governments of both countries in their battle against extremists.
US Vice President Joe Biden later sought to end the rift.
In a call to Abadi, the White House quoted Biden as saying he “recognised the enormous sacrifice and bravery of Iraqi forces over the past 18 months in Ramadi and elsewhere”.
The loss of Ramadi, capital of Iraq’s largest province Anbar, raised questions over the strategy adopted by both Baghdad and Washington to tackle IS.
Months of air strikes and the deployment of advisers to reform and train the security forces have failed to keep up with IS’s aggressive tactics.
“Secretary Carter’s remarks are surprising and likely to negatively affect the morale of the ISF,” Iraq analyst Ahmed Ali said, referring to Iraqi security forces.
Ali argued there were examples of Iraqi forces showing plenty of grit and cited the Baiji refinery, where elite troops have repelled relentless IS attacks for months.
Ahmed al-Assadi, spokesman of the Hashed al-Shaabi umbrella organisation for Shia militia and volunteers which Abadi reluctantly called in after Ramadi’s fall, reacted angrily to Carter’s comments.
“This lack of will the US defence secretary mentioned is how the enemies of Iraq have tried to depict the Iraqi security forces,” he said.
Abadi and Washington had hoped to keep the Hashed and its Iranian-backed militia out of the Sunni stronghold of Anbar.
But the collapse of the security forces during Ramadi’s fall was seen as evidence Baghdad could not afford to do without the Hashed’s determination to fight and sheer numbers.  
“It makes my heart bleed because we lost Ramadi but I can assure you we can bring it back soon,” Abadi told the BBC.
Iraqi regular forces backed by the Hashed and Sunni tribal fighters from Anbar have begun clawing back land east of Ramadi during the past few days.

Syria jets target IS militants in Palmyra

AFP/Beirut

Syrian government aircraft carried out intense strikes yesterday against the Islamic State group in and around the ancient city of Palmyra after its fall to the militants, a military source said.
“The air force struck more than 160 Daesh targets, killing and wounding terrorists and destroying weapons and vehicles equipped with machineguns” on Palmyra’s outskirts and elsewhere in the east of Homs province, the source said.
“We are pursuing Daesh wherever they are,” the source said, using the Arabic acronym for IS.
“Military operations, including air raids, are ongoing in the area around Al Suknah, Palmyra, the Arak and Al Hail gas fields and all the roads leading to Palmyra,” he said.
State television said “more than 50 Daesh terrorists” had been killed in the air strikes.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least four civilians had been killed in the raids, which were the most intense since the militants overran the city on Thursday.
Dozens of people had also been wounded in the raids, and IS was believed to have taken losses when a military security building was hit, said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.
The strikes targeted several areas of the city, including some close to the city’s famed Greco-Roman ruins, a Unesco world heritage site, he said.
But so far they had failed to halt the militants, who advanced towards the capital Damascus and overran major phosphate mines about 70km south of Palmyra.
“IS has made further progress on the Tadmor-Damascus highway and grabbed the Khnaifess phosphate mines and nearby houses,” said the Observatory, which relies on a network of sources on the group for its reports.
IS is accused of executing hundreds of people in and around Palmyra since it swept into the oasis city last week after a lightning advance across the desert from its stronghold in the Euphrates Valley to the east.
The Observatory said on Sunday that it had documented the executions of at least 217 people, among them 67 civilians, including 14 children.
Some of those killed had been beheaded, Abdel Rahman said, adding that the militants had also taken some 600 people prisoner.


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