ISIS halts Iraqi army at gates of Fallujah, civilians trapped

Islamic State fighters halted an Iraqi army assault on the city of Fallujah with a counter-attack at its southern gates on Tuesday, while the United Nations warned of peril for civilians trapped in the city and used by militants as human shields.

The Iraqi army's assault on Fallujah has begun what is expected to be one of the biggest battles ever fought against Islamic State, with the government backed by world powers including the United States and Iran, and determined to win back the first major Iraqi city that fell to the group in 2014.

A week after Baghdad announced the start of the assault, its troops advanced in large numbers into the city limits for the first time on Monday, pouring into rural territory on its southern outskirts but stopping short of the main built-up area.
Baghdad describes the assault to retake the city as a potential turning point in its US-backed campaign to defeat the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim militants who rule a self-proclaimed caliphate across much of Iraq and Syria.

Fallujah, where US troops fought the biggest battles of their own 2003-2011 occupation against Islamic State's precursors, is the militants' closest bastion to Baghdad, believed to be the base from which they have waged a campaign of suicide bombings on the capital less than an hour's drive away.

Retaking it would give the government control of the main population centers in the fertile Euphrates River valley west of the capital for the first time in more than two years.

But the assault is also a test of the army's ability to capture territory while protecting civilians. Although most of Falluja's population is believed to have fled during six months of siege, 50,000 people are still thought to be trapped inside with limited access to food, water or healthcare.

“A human catastrophe is unfolding in Fallujah. Families are caught in the crossfire with no safe way out,” said Jan Egeland, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the organizations helping families displaced form the city. “Warring parties must guarantee civilians safe exit now, before it’s too late and more lives are lost,” he said.

The United Nations said there were reports that the militants were using several hundred families as human shields in the city center, a tactic they have employed in other locations in Iraq. It said 3,700 people had managed to escape the city in the past week.

"Most people able to get out come from the outskirts of Fallujah. For some time militants have been controlling movements, we know civilians have been prevented from fleeing," said Ariane Rummery, spokeswoman for UN refugee agency UNHCR.

"There are also reports from people who left in recent days that they are being required to move with ISIL within Fallujah," she said, using an acronym for Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh.

Soldiers from Iraq's elite Rapid Response Team stopped their advance overnight about 500 meters (yards) from the al-Shuhada district, the southeastern part of city's main built-up area, an army commander and a police officer said.
"Our forces came under heavy fire, they are well dug in in trenches and tunnels," said the commander speaking in Camp Tariq, the rear army base south of Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad.

Reuters journalists in the area could hear explosions from artillery shelling and air strikes from a US-led coalition supporting the Iraqi forces.