Shiite militias converge on Iraq's Ramadi after ISIL takeover

Shiite militias converged on Ramadi May 18 in a bid to recapture it from jihadists who dealt the Iraqi government a stinging blow by overrunning the city in a deadly three-day blitz.

The loss of the capital of Iraq's largest province was Baghdad's worst military setback since it started clawing back territory from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) late last year.
 
Days after a rare message from ISIL supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi urging mass mobilisation, the group came close to also seizing one of Syria's most famed heritage sites, ancient Palmyra, but the army pinned it back.
 
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had been reluctant to deploy Shiite militias to Anbar province for fear of alienating its overwhelmingly Sunni Arab population.    

He favoured developing locally recruited forces, a policy that had strong US support.
 
But militia commanders said on Monday that Ramadi's fall had shown that the government could not do without the Popular Mobilisation units (Hashed al-Shaabi).
 
Badr militia chief Hadi al-Ameri said the province's leaders should have taken up his offer of help sooner.
 
The group's Al Ghadeer television said Ameri "holds the political representatives of Anbar responsible for the fall of Ramadi because they objected to the participation of Hashed al-Shaabi in the defence of their own people".
 
Various militias announced they had units already in Anbar -- including around the cities of Fallujah and Habbaniyah -- ready to close in on Ramadi and engage the city's new masters.
         
A spokesman for Ketaeb Hezbollah, one of the leading Shiite paramilitary groups, said his organisation had units ready to join the Ramadi front from three...