Terror group launches counterattack but Iraqi commander says the group of about 100 fighters was eventually repelled

Iraqi forces faced tough resistance from Islamic State fighters as they attempted to enter the centre of Falluja, where there are fears for tens of thousands of trapped civilians.

A day after announcing a push into the city, the last major population centre held by Isis in western Iraq, forces led by Iraq’s elite counter-terrorism service were met by a counterattack in the southern Naimiya district on Tuesday.

“There were about 100 fighters involved, they came at us heavily armed but did not use car bombs or suicide bombers,” Lt Gen Abdelwahab al-Saadi, the overall commander of the Falluja operation, told Agence France-Presse.

Saadi said Iraqi forces in the area were eventually able to repel the attack, killing 75 Isis fighters. He did not give a figure for losses on the government side. A provincial councillor, Rajeh Barakat, said the US-led coalition and Iraqi jets had provided air support.

A concerted campaign against Isis in Iraq and Syria has stretched the militants across multiple fronts. Falluja was the first major city to be seized by Isis, taken long before the militants surged into northern Iraq and conquered the Nineveh plains and Iraq’s second city, Mosul.

Although it has less strategic value than Mosul, the Sunni city carries great symbolic weight for the Iraqi government and Isis. “It is important because of its symbolic value to Daesh [Isis],” said Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi government adviser. “It is close to Baghdad and close to sovereign infrastructure in west Baghdad, namely the international airport, and it is the first place Daesh occupied in Anbar in 2014.”

Falluja was a key hotbed in the insurgency that raged in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Two separate large-scale offensives by the US military in 2004 destroyed much of the city.

This time an estimated 50,000 civilians remain trapped and besieged, facing starvation. At the weekend a local police chief said Isis had been using residents of villages on the outskirts of the city as human shields.

The UN high commissioner for refugees said 3,700 civilians had fled Falluja in the last week, often travelling on foot and escaping through disused irrigation pipes. Those in the city have had little access to food and clean water since roads into the jihadi stronghold were cut off in December last year.

Civilians flee the offensive on Fallujah – in pictures Read more

Several people died trying to escape, the UNHCR said. It said there had been reports of a big increase in the number of men and older boys in Falluja being killed for refusing to fight for Isis. Other reports said a number of people attempting to depart had been killed or whipped, and one man’s leg was reportedly amputated. The Guardian has not been able to verify the reports independently.

A Falluja resident contacted by AFP by telephone said many civilians were eager to see the security forces recapture the city but there was fear of what Isis might do as defeat loomed.

“[Isis] is angry because they don’t feel supported and they have been seen insulting people on the streets, shouting things like: ‘Cowards, you are not with us,’” said the resident, who gave his name as Abu Mohammed al-Dulaimi.

Some also fear retribution by auxiliary Shia militias taking part in the campaign, some of whom may suspect that civilians who have remained in the city are sympathetic to Isis. In a video published at the weekend, the leader of the Abu Fadl al-Abbas militia called for the cleansing of the “tumour of Falluja”, saying there were no patriots in the city.

Iraq’s top Shia spiritual authority, the grand ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, urged restraint in Friday prayers last week, calling on soldiers fighting to liberate Falluja to make saving civilians a priority over targeting the enemy.

Isis supporters on secure media channels said the US and Iran-backed offensive to liberate Falluja proved those two countries were in league against oppressed Sunni Muslims.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A member of the Iraqi security forces ride atop a military vehicle near Falluja. Photograph: Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters

“America’s alliance with Iran is now explicit and evident for all the people,” said one Isis supporter on Telegram, a secure messaging app. “[America] is defending … Qassem Suleimani with its air force.” Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, had reportedly been assisting Shia militia forces on the ground during the offensive.

Isis has seen its state contract over the past few months, losing the city of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, late last year, as well as the Yazidi homeland of Sinjar – though both were essentially levelled in the process.

The terror group also lost the strategic town of Shadadi, near the Syrian-Iraqi border, and historic Palmyra in the deserts of central Syria to a joint Russian-Syrian army offensive this year.

Kurdish paramilitaries and Arab fighters backed by US special forces on the ground are expanding their offensive in northern Syria, drawing closer to the militants’ capital of Raqqa, while in Iraq, Kurdish troops launched a campaign on Sunday to liberate a series of villages on the road east of Mosul leading to Irbil.

The losses prompted a rare admission of the difficulties it was facing by its spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani. Last week, he acknowledged the group’s loss of territory but pledged it would ultimately be victorious, saying it had not been defeated when it lost territory or leaders in the past.