Iraqi army heads towards Fallujah

The town, humiliatingly lost to Isis by the Iraqi government in May, was largely won back in the past week with the help of 600 airstrikes from the US-led coalition.

Critically, the victory in the Sunni-dominated Anbar provincial capital was carried out without help from Shiite irregular militias, who had previously done much of the fighting but also stand accused of their own sectarian atrocities.

McCraw said that in one of the more heavily defended areas, Iraqi forces had found about 300 explosives planted along a 150-meter (150-yard) stretch south of the main government complex.

Coalition representative Warren said casualties to Iraqi forces during the fight for Ramadi were in the low double digits.

As government forces mounted their final assault to retake the key city - controlled by the Sunni terror group since May - ISIS began to pull families out of their homes and move them to the eastern part of the city.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region-Several hundred Islamic State (ISIS) militants are still believed to be in Ramadi days after the Iraqi army declared it free from the group's control.

But with many other areas still held by Islamic State in western and northern Iraq, the authorities have not made clear what path they intend to take to Mosul, 400 km (250 miles) north of Baghdad.

Patrick Martin, Iraq analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, said the Ramadi win was the reversal of an earlier loss and would fall short of seriously crippling IS in the area.

The Pentagon said Tuesday that an IS leader with "direct" ties to the alleged mastermind of the Paris attacks was among 10 of the group's higher-ups killed in Syria and Iraq this month.

Terrified families waving white flags are emerging from homes reduced to rubble in the Iraqi city of Ramadi. If this alliance between the Shiite-dominated Iraqi army and the Sunni tribes holds, it could undercut the Islamic State's appeal to the Sunni minority.

Around 70,000 families have taken refuge in camps around Baghdad, according to Iraq's High Commission for Human Rights director Fadel al-Gharawi. Instead, they were a combination of units that have been "retrained" over recent months by U.S. and Australian advisors and what the Wall Street Journal described as a US-backed "thousands-strong force of local Sunni tribal fighters".

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