Iraq Launches Operation to Retake Ramadi From ISIS

Iraqi military plans to retake the city of Ramadi from ISIS militants for the first time in months, officials said.

The forces plan to take advantage of an impending sandstorm by positioning themselves in a key battleground area, a senior Iraqi security official told NBC News.

The United States and its allies trained Iraqi forces to fight a counterinsurgency, Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesperson in Baghdad, said, but ISIS has "defended Ramadi almost in an early 20th-century style, with belts of defenses," a more conventional tactic than Iraq and the U.S.-led coalition had anticipated.

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