Leaders of Iraq's Anbar province call for U.S. ground forces to stop ISIS
The situation in Anbar, just to the west of Baghdad, is "very bad," the president of Anbar Provincial Council told CNN by phone on Saturday.
Sabah Al-Karhout said the council has intelligence that ISIS has dispatched as many as 10,000 fighters to Anbar from Syria and Mosul in northern Iraq.
The council's deputy head, Falleh al-Issawi, told CNN that it had asked the central government to intervene immediately to save the province from imminent collapse -- and to request the deployment of U.S. ground forces there.
That would be a significant shift, since the Iraqi government has until now been adamant that it does not want U.S. forces on the ground. President Barack Obama has also previously ruled out the use of U.S. ground troops.
The Iraqi government said it has not received any official request from Anbar province for U.S. military intervention and ground forces to help in the fight against ISIS, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi's media office said Saturday.
"If we receive any request, we will look into it and we will give our recommendation, but thus far we have not received any request," the office said in a statement.
Meanwhile, ISIS militants are also tightening their grip on the holdout Syrian Kurdish city of Kobani despite coalition air strikes in the area.
U.S. and allied warplanes hit ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq Friday and Saturday, striking a command and control facility, a staging building, a fighting position and two small units north of Kobani, the U.S. Central Command said Saturday. Airstrikes also hit three ISIS trucks south of the city.
Still, fighters on the ground say, ISIS kept advancing.
Fighter: 'We cannot stop the ISIS advance'
ISIS fighters controlled about half of the Syrian city on Friday, significantly more than even a day earlier, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
A fighter in Kobani who spoke to CNN by phone Saturday said those defending the besieged city, also known as Ayn al-Arab, are in a grave situation.
Kurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units (YPG) and Free Syrian Army (FSA) troops are greatly outnumbered by ISIS militants and lack firepower, he said.
"We cannot stop the ISIS advance from the east because they have artillery, many fighters and a good supply of ammunition," he said, adding that YPG and FSA fighters are worried because they are close to being completely encircled by ISIS forces.
He put the location of the ISIS forces at between 700 meters and one kilometer from the official border crossing at Mursitpinar.
If the crossing fell to ISIS, the group would control three official border crossings between Turkey and Syria and a border strip with Turkey stretching approximately 100 kilometers (62 miles.)
A CNN team by the border saw plumes of black smoke rise from the city Saturday afternoon as artillery fire appeared to rain down on targets deep in the west of the city.
A civilian who has been in Kobani since fighting began told CNN by phone Saturday that the situation is worse than ever.
Civilians remaining in the city endure mortar fire from ISIS positions and live in fear of being beheaded by ISIS should the group take the city.
The U.N. Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, warned at a Geneva news conference Friday that if Kobani falls, the civilians trapped in Syria "will most likely be massacred" by ISIS.
"You remember Srebrenica? We do," de Mistura said, referring to the 1995 massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian war after Dutch U.N. peacekeepers failed to protect them. "We never forgot. And probably we never forgave ourselves for that."
Reports: Haditha under threat
In Iraq, ISIS apparently is targeting a string of cities along the Euphrates River where most of the population is concentrated.
Reports Saturday suggest the latest place to be encircled is Haditha, the last large town in Anbar province to survive outside ISIS control.
A coalition airstrike Saturday afternoon killed more than 30 suspected ISIS militants who were part of an armed convoy heading toward the Ein al-Assad military base west of Ramadi, police Capt. Bahjat al-Hamdani in the town told CNN.
ISIS, the self-proclaimed "Islamic State" which also is referred to as ISIL, is now in control of 80% of Anbar province. If the Sunni extremists seize the rest of the province, their territory will extend from Raqqa in Syria to the perimeters of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, al-Issawi said.
Iraqi army forces and Anbar tribesmen fighting alongside them have threatened to abandon their weapons if the U.S. military does not intervene to help them, he said, because they are faltering before the ISIS onslaught.
The army soldiers are not capable of defending themselves against ISIS because of a lack of training and equipment, he said. Already, some 1,800 tribesmen in the province have been killed or injured in the struggle.
Threat to Baghdad?
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned Friday that Anbar province was in trouble.
A senior U.S. defense official also told CNN that Iraqi forces are "up against the wall" in Anbar. Some units are in danger of being cut off by the advancing militants, who say they are members of ISIS.
The Iraqis' ultimate goal is to take back some of the vast areas, in both Iraq and Syria, that ISIS controls.
But right now, Iraqi forces appear to be mostly trying to survive -- taking defensive positions and using Apache helicopters again, even after two were shot down in the area this week, according to the U.S. official.
A CNN team on the defensive perimeter of Baghdad in recent days saw that the Iraqi army has very significant defenses there.
ISIS appears to be conducting "hit-and-run" attacks rather than making any kind of frontal assault on the capital.
On Saturday, two car bombs exploded at separate checkpoints in northern Baghdad, killing 30 people and wounding 44, according to medical officials. It wasn't immediately known whether the attacks were the work of ISIS.
But gains by ISIS in an area near Baghdad airport, from which U.S. Apache helicopters operate, may heighten concern.
Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Francona, a CNN military analyst, said: "I think at some point, there's going to be the need for an additional ground force in western Iraq."
It remains to be seen whether those troops need to be American, or can be provided by other coalition nations, he said, but the Iraqi army, even after coalition airstrikes, has not been able to blunt the momentum of ISIS.
"The Iraqi army has virtually evaporated. The command structure doesn't exist. Although they have some good soldiers, they have no leadership. So additional ground forces are going to be necessary."
CNN
