Fear stalks neighboring Karbala after fall of Ramadi to ISIS

BAGHDAD—Hours after the fall of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s largest province of Anbar to the Islamic State (ISIS), a military officer said that the radical group may expand its offensive south into Shiite Karbala.

“The ISIS militants might open a new front at Karbala in order to distract the army from their drive towards the capital,” an Iraqi army officer in Anbar told Rudaw on condition of anonymity.

ISIS militants captured the provincial capital Ramadi Sunday after they launched a massive attack Thursday evening against Iraqi troops in which they employed car bombs, mortars and snipers.

Karbala MP in the Iraqi parliament Habib al-Turfi told Rudaw that his province is bracing for an emergency because “ISIS has tried time and again to take the town of al-Nukhayb,”

However, Al-Turfi thinks that “ISIS will not succeed in attacking Karbala because there are no supporters of the group here,”

The town of al-Nukhayb is located on the provincial border of Anbar and Karbala. It is currently part of Anbar but legally contested by both provinces and ISIS has tried to take the town and use it as a launchpad into the Shiite province.

Former Iraqi Vice President and Baath leader Izzar al-Douri who was reported killed last month, said in an audio tape last week that “al-Nukhayb has been occupied by Iranian-backed militias” and he called on the Sunni tribes to drive them out.

Iraqi MP Muhammad al-Karbuli, told the media that the army pulled out of Anbar on orders from the high command, adding that the parliament should summon military leaders for this decision.

Al-Karbuli said that he feared “massacres against the people of Ramadi,”

The Iraqi officer who spoke to Rudaw said that with Anbar fallen to ISIS, the army “must now concentrate its forces around Baghdad and create a security cordon around the capital,”

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdad released an audiotape last week in which he urged members of his group inside Baghdad to resume their attacks and called on his militants to “head to Baghdad after finishing the war in Anbar,”