Police: We Control the Walls, AQI Has Everything Else

After well over 100 people were killed Friday fighting continued apace in Fallujah, with the military reporting another 55 al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) fighters killed today, along with unknown numbers of civilians and security forces.

The mess that was emerging yesterday is now more or less a complete disaster, with Anbar Provincial Police confirming the city of Fallujah is now entirely under AQI’s control, and that police are positioned outside the city hoping to eventually make some effort to unseat them.

“The walls of the city are in the hands of the police force, but the people of Fallujah are the prisoners of AQI,” reported police chief Hadi Razeij. Parts of the nearby capital city of Ramadi have also fallen, though the extent of that is still unknown.

The Iraqi military appears to be ready for a protracted battle for Fallujah, shelling the city with hundreds of thousands of residents, while AQI yesterday declared that Fallujah is now an independent Islamic State.