Iraq launches final push for IS-held Ramadi

Iraqi security forces yesterday advanced into the centre of Ramadi for a final push aimed at retaking the city they lost to the Islamic State group in May, officials said.

"We went into the centre of Ramadi from several fronts and we began purging residential areas," said Sabah al-Noman, spokesman of the elite Iraqi counter-terrorism service.

"The city will be cleared in the coming 72 hours. ... We did not face strong resistance, only snipers and suicide bombers and this is a tactic we expected," Noman told AFP.

The fresh push was launched overnight and is meant to result in the full recapture of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's western province of Anbar.

The fighting in Ramadi is led by the elite counter-terrorism force, backed by US-led coalition air strikes and also supported by forces from the police, the army and Sunni tribes opposed to the jihadists.

Retaking the city, an insurgent bastion that saw some of the deadliest fighting against US troops a decade ago, would be the Iraqi federal forces' most significant victory so far.

The breakthrough came earlier this month when counter-terrorism forces broke down IS defences and retook the key southwestern neighbourhood of Al-Tameem.

After taking a few days to beef up their new positions, Iraqi military leaders had said in recent days a final push was imminent and leaflets urging the population to flee were dropped over the weekend.

On Monday, thinktank IHS Jane's said IS group lost around 14 percent of its territory in 2015, while Syria's Kurds almost tripled the land they control.

The development is a blow to the group given that its aim is to capture and hold territory to expand its so-called "caliphate", where it imposes a severe and bloody form of what it calls Islamic law.

The US-based thinktank said the group's territory had shrunk 12,800 square kilometres to 78,000 square km between the start of the year and December 14.

Meanwhile, Australia yesterday warned that IS is working to boost its presence in Indonesia with dreams of creating a "distant caliphate" in the world's most populous Muslim-majority country.

While Australian authorities believed there was little chance IS could create a caliphate within Indonesia, they were deeply worried the terror group may establish a permanent foothold in the archipelago. This could allow it to conduct attacks against Western or Australian interests within Indonesia and beyond.

In another development, Russia and France have agreed to bolster efforts to share intelligence relating to the Islamic State jihadist group after the two countries vowed to cooperate militarily on the issue.

The two sides also agreed to share intelligence on foreign fighters having joined the ranks of jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria, a figure that has more than doubled since last year to at least 27,000, according to a recent report by an intelligence consultancy.