The Islamic State offensive — which began with ambush-style attacks after sundown Thursday — also pointed to wider concerns about the ability of Iraqi ground forces to overcome the well-armed extremists on other fronts around the country.
It also could restore a major foothold for the Islamic State less than 70 miles west of Baghdad in the crucial Anbar Province, which has been the scene of bloodshed and seesaw battles since the U.S.-led invasion more than 12 years ago.
Fighting gripped Ramadi throughout the day, but it appeared the Islamic State militiamen had the upper hand.
The militants seized the government compound in downtown Ramadi and hoisted the group’s black flag. Battles then moved to pockets of the city still held by Iraq forces. There was no immediate sign of U.S.-led airstrikes, which have been waged against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria since last year.
[The hidden hand behind the Islamic State in Iraq]
Government forces had managed to hold on to the largely Sunni Muslim city of about 900,000 people in recent months, despite regular attacks by the Islamic State. The militant group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, seized most of the rest of Anbar last summer as part of sweeps that took other areas such as Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq.
“The city’s fallen. They’ve taken it,” Maj. Omar Khamis al-Dahl, a senior officer in the Ramadi police, said by telephone.
But the governor of Anbar province, Sohaib Alrawi, said in a Twitter message that the situation in the city was “dire,” but that battles were ongoing.
Still, the attacks appear to demonstrate the resilience of the Islamic State despite facing steady airstrikes and losing territory to pro-government forces in recent months.
On the Iraqi side, the Ramadi battles also suggested that pro-government forces — including the military and Iranian-backed Shiite militias — remain hindered by poor coordination, corruption and sectarian squabbles, analysts say.
Dozens of soldiers fled the city overnight Thursday during the initial stages of the Islamic State attack, which involved heavy artillery and multiple car bombings, said Dahl. More than 60 police officers have been killed in the fighting, and hundreds of police and soldiers were surrounded in a military compound in the center of the city, he said.
The attack on Ramadi comes more than a month after pro-government forces, backed by U.S. airstrikes, drove Islamic State militants out of the city of Tikrit, an advance that officials in Baghdad touted as a major victory.
The government has hoped to push northward to drive Islamic State forces out of Mosul, a stronghold of the militants since they captured it in June 2014.
“We have not received reinforcements from the government, and there will be a massacre of these people like there was in Speicher,” said Dahl, the Ramadi officer. He referred to a former U.S. military base near Tikrit where an estimated 1,700 Iraqi soldiers were captured and killed en masse by the Islamic State last summer.
In a statement, Iraq’s defense ministry sought to play down the Ramadi attacks, warning citizens “not to believe rumors promoted by the terrorists of Daesh.” Daesh is an Arabic term for the Islamic State.
The statement added that Iraqi forcers were fighting to “fully purge the city of Ramadi” of the Islamic State.
The government in Baghdad has not sent reinforcements to Ramadi because its miltiary forces are stretched thin, said Muhannad Haimour, spokesmen for Anbar’s Gov. Sohaib Alrawi.
“There are many fronts that the Iraqi army is dealing with. It’s not just Ramadi where the fighting is taking place, and so the resources are stretched,” he said. "But we believe that with the help of the international coalition, the situation will improve in the next few days.”
Omar Shehan, tribal militiaman who fights alongside Ramadi police, said that the city’s police force had largely retreated Thursday night to the military compound that is besieged by Islamic State militants. Used as the government’s military-operations center for Anbar, the compound, in the center-west part of Ramadi, would fall without support from pro-government forces in Baghdad, he said.
“It’s desperate now,” he said.
The assault on Thursday evening began by surprise, with Islamic State militants entering downtown Ramadi wearing police uniforms, Shehan said. Those militants gunned down scores of policemen, clearing the way for an intense assault involving rocket-propelled grenades, artillery and car bombings, he said.
“When they came to the front line last night, at first we thought they were policemen,” Shehan said, speaking by telephone from Ramadi. “Then they started killing us.”
The downtown compound, which houses the Anbar provincial, fell at about 2 pm, according to police and residents. They said that the militants, who placed the Islamic State’s black flag on the top of the compound, stormed Ramadi from the west and from the Abu Farraj neighborhood, which is in the north. The nearby police headquarters also was damaged in the fighting, although police had largely vacated the facility hours earlier.
Ali Dulaimi, a 28-year-old student at Anbar University, fled the downtown area with his three brothers and parents last night. Because the Islamic State controls so much of the city, they have been unable to find a way to escape, he said, adding that bodies litter streets.
“There are dead people lying all over the street as we running away,” he said.
“It was just scenes of carnage in a World War II movie, with bombing all around and dead people lying in the streets.”
Anbar Province — part of Iraq’s Sunni heartland — has played a central role in Iraq’s conflicts since the toppling of Saddam Hussein, whose regime favored the Sunni tribes in the region.
Anbar became a center of the Sunni insurgency after the U.S.-led invasion, including the scene of some of the war’s most intense urban combat for American forces during battles in Ramadi and Fallujah. In 2006, Anbar became a centerpiece of Washington’s counterinsurgency strategy when some main Sunni tribes made alliances with the U.S. military.
Thousands of Iraqis flee as Islamic State makes gains in Anbar
Islamic State fighters are threatening to overrun Anbar province
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