A UN report published on Saturday finds that the ongoing battle for the city of Ramadi has damaged or destroyed more than 4,500 buildings.
The findings, gathered comparing satellite imagery of the city collected in July 2014 to imagery collected last month, reveal that nearly 1,500 buildings have been completely destroyed, the report said.
The Islamic State (IS) group overran Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, in May last year after months of clashes with Iraqi government forces.
Photo: Reuters
Last month government forces retook the city’s western and central districts under cover of heavy coalition air bombardment.
UN Deputy Special Representative to Iraq Lise Grande said that the extent of the damage raises concerns about reconstruction, calling the destruction in Ramadi “incomparable” to destruction in other Iraqi cities taken back from IS.
“The kind of damage that happened in Ramadi is incomparable to what we saw in Tikrit,” said Grande, referring to the last major city that forces aligned with the Iraqi government took back from IS control.
Grande said the report was preliminary as UN teams have not yet been able to access Ramadi on the ground.
While members of the US-led coalition to fight IS have pledged more than US$50 million to Iraqi reconstruction, Iraqi and coalition officials estimate that rebuilding Ramadi alone could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
In the past month the US-led coalition planes launched more than 140 airstrikes at IS targets in and around Ramadi.
The UN report was released on the same day that Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull made an unannounced visit to Baghdad to hold talks with his Iraqi counterpart, Haider al-Abadi, on the fight against the IS.
Al-Abadi’s office said that he and Turnbull discussed the war against IS, strengthening relations between the two nations, as well as economic and agricultural cooperation.
Iraqi forces are turning the corner in their fight against the IS and victory is within sight, Turnbull said in an e-mailed statement after the meeting with al-Abadi.
“The prime minister certainly gave us the impression of real, substantial confidence that they’re turning the corner in the battle,” he said in the statement.
Turnbull also reaffirmed Australia’s commitment to the fight against the IS.
Canberra in 2014 deployed 400 air-force personnel and 200 special forces soldiers based in Iraq to join US President Barack Obama’s coalition against IS. Three hundred more soldiers left in April last year to help train Iraqi troops.
Turnbull is travelling to Washington for a two-day visit beginning today that will include a major foreign policy address and meeting with Obama.
Additional reporting by AFP and Bloomberg
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