Fall of Ramadi: why it matters

By Ruth Pollard
Updated May 20 2015 - 1:13am, first published 12:29am
A car is engulfed by flames during clashes in the city of Ramadi on Saturday. Photo: STRINGER/IRAQ
A car is engulfed by flames during clashes in the city of Ramadi on Saturday. Photo: STRINGER/IRAQ
Iraqi fighters of the Shiite militia Asaib Ahl al-Haq (The League of the Righteous) stand guard outside their headquarters  in the Iraqi mainly Shiite southern city of Basra on Monday.  Photo: HAIDAR MOHAMMED ALI
Iraqi fighters of the Shiite militia Asaib Ahl al-Haq (The League of the Righteous) stand guard outside their headquarters in the Iraqi mainly Shiite southern city of Basra on Monday. Photo: HAIDAR MOHAMMED ALI
Iraqi families, who fled the city of Ramadi after it was seized by Islamic State group militants, talk to journalists at a camp in Bzeibez, on the southwestern frontier of Baghdad on Monday.  Photo: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE
Iraqi families, who fled the city of Ramadi after it was seized by Islamic State group militants, talk to journalists at a camp in Bzeibez, on the southwestern frontier of Baghdad on Monday. Photo: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE

The city of Ramadi – the capital of the Sunni-majority Anbar province that lies just 112 kilometres west of Baghdad, Iraq – is the first major city to fall to Islamic State militants since last June, when they stormed across the border from Syria and took first Mosul and then Tikrit.

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