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Key Iraqi City Falls to ISIS as Security Forces Flee

(New York Times) Tim Arango - Despite intensified American airstrikes in recent weeks, the last Iraqi security forces fled Ramadi on Sunday as the city fell to the Islamic State, whose militants ransacked the provincial military headquarters, seizing a large store of weapons, and killed people loyal to the government. The fall of Ramadi represented the biggest victory so far this year for the Islamic State. The deterioration in Anbar province over the past month underscored the ineffectiveness of the Iraqi Army, which is being trained by American military advisers, and raised questions about the U.S. strategy to defeat the Islamic State. One Iraqi soldier who had been stationed at the Anbar Operations Command headquarters said the forces had left behind a huge cache of weapons recently sent by Baghdad, including rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns supplied by both the U.S. and Russia.
2015-05-18 00:00:00
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