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Iraq launches attack to recapture city of Tikrit

30,000 fighters battle militants

Iraqi security forces and Shi’ite fighters attacked Islamic State strongholds in Salahuddin province on Monday.THAIER AL-SUDANI/REuters

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi military, alongside thousands of Shi’ite militia fighters, attacked the Islamic State Monday in a bid to retake Tikrit, a battle that could either become a pivotal fight in the campaign to reclaim north and west Iraq or deepen the country’s bloody sectarian divide.

Iraqi state television announced the beginning of the offensive Monday morning, a day after Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi visited the forces massed on Tikrit’s outskirts and delivered a speech in which he said “zero hour” for the liberation of Tikrit was at hand.

Officials said the attack involved more than 30,000 fighters supported by Iraqi helicopters and jets. It was the boldest effort yet to recapture Tikrit and the largest Iraqi offensive anywhere in the country since the fall of Mosul to the Islamic State in June.

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While visiting Samarra, a town near Tikrit, on Sunday, Abadi promised amnesty to local residents who had been forced to join the Islamic State. But he said it was the last chance for them to lay down their arms and assist the security forces.

It is not the first time the Iraqi military has sought to retake Tikrit in the months since the city, Saddam Hussein’s hometown and a Sunni stronghold, fell into militant hands during the Islamic State’s blitz through the country.

Last summer, the militants’ offensive had even residents of Baghdad worried about a new conqueror, but the advance stalled near Samarra.

Several times since then, the army and allied Shi’ite militias — sometimes in defiance of objections from US officials, who warned of a sectarian blood bath should they enter Tikrit — have begun counteroffensives, only to abort them.

By sundown Monday, fighting raged in the areas surrounding Tikrit, but the army and militia fighters had not yet pushed on the city center.

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The Islamic State, meanwhile, released a video that seemed designed to terrify any citizens who were considering aiding the advance by the security forces. The clip showed the execution by gunshot of four men, dressed in orange jumpsuits, who were said to be local tribesmen collaborating with the government.

Alaa al-Ajeeli, a schoolteacher near Tikrit, described chaos in his village Monday. As mortar shells rained down and helicopters buzzed, the militants began calling from loudspeakers for citizens to leave their homes and flee. “We all escaped immediately to various directions,” he said, explaining that many citizens fled to Anbar or Kirkuk provinces.

In a speech Monday to Parliament, Abadi echoed the words of President George W. Bush in the aftermath of 9/11, saying the residents of Tikrit were either with Iraq or with the Islamic State. “There is no neutrality in the battle against ISIS,” Abadi said, referring to an acronym of the group. “If someone is being neutral with ISIS, then he is one of them.”

From a military perspective, capturing Tikrit is seen as an important precursor to an operation to retake Mosul. Success in Tikrit could push up the timetable for a Mosul campaign, while failure would most likely mean more delays.

The US military, though, appears divided on the question of when the Iraqi military — which collapsed last summer in the face of the Islamic State onslaught — would be ready for a wide-scale offensive on Mosul or in Anbar province in the west of the country, which is also in the militants’ hands. Some US officials have backed off earlier estimates that it could happen as early as April.

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Even a victory in Tikrit could be costly, given the prominent role of Shi’ite militias, which are feared by the Sunni population. And reports that the militias have carried out sectarian abuses have complicated efforts to persuade Sunnis to work with the government.

The United States, in returning to a military role in Iraq, has pushed for reconciliation between Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government and the country’s Sunni minority, but there has been little apparent progress. The United States has also insisted that Iraq establish Sunni fighting units to retake and hold Sunni areas, and it warned against using Shi’ite forces to invade those areas.

Yet it has been almost exclusively Shi’ite fighters who have protected Baghdad since the Islamic State offensive last summer, and Iranian-directed militias have secured some of the most significant gains on the battlefield, often fighting with the support of US airpower.

Further, the fight against the Islamic State has brought the United States and Iran into an awkward alliance in Iraq. While the US effort has been most apparent in its airstrike campaign, Iran has taken the most prominent role on the ground, not just with the militias but with Iranian generals sometimes directing the fighting.

On Monday, Major General Qassim Suleimani, the Iranian spymaster who once directed the militias’ deadly campaign against American forces in Iraq, was in the field near Tikrit, according to a prominent Iraqi militia leader and the Iranian Fars news agency.

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Among the nearly 30,000 fighters involved in the Tikrit operation were an estimated 700 to 1,000 Sunni tribal fighters, according to Iraqi officials.

Sahar Mawlood, who had been a member of the Salahuddin Provincial Council before the Islamic State took control, discounted fears that the offensive could incite more sectarian bloodletting.

Yet some Iraqi officials have referred to the new operation as revenge for the Shi’ite victims of a massacre last summer in Tikrit by the Islamic State, raising the likelihood of violent retribution. Militants, possibly aided by local Sunni tribesmen, slaughtered more than 1,000 Shi’ite soldiers from a nearby military base, Camp Speicher.