“This Is the End of ISIS”: Daesh in Crisis after Coalition Launched Strike on Fallujah

For the first time since it conquered large parts of Iraq, ISIS appears to be in real trouble.

The terror organization is experiencing increasing problems defending the strategically important city of Falluja against a massive assault by the Iraqi army and Shia militias — or so-called “Popular Mobilization Units.”

The third battle for Fallujah began earlier this week when Iraqi troops, supported by airstrikes by the US-led coalition against ISIS, pounded ISIS positions in the city and succeeded to retake some neighborhoods at the outskirts of the city.

Retaining Fallujah is critically important for ISIS there are signs that its forces are beginning to crumble under the pressure of the coordinated attacks that also threaten the group in the area of its capital Raqqa in Syria.

ISIS uses suicide car bombers to derail the offensive by the combined Iraqi-Iranian forces. The latest news, however, indicates that the odd coalition of Iranian-led ground forces and US warplanes is making progress.

This happened after the coalition killed local ISIS commander Maher al-Bilawi in an airstrike that reportedly claimed the lives 70 ISIS terrorists. The Baghdad Command Center of the Iraqi combined forces reported that 140 ISIS members were killed in Fallujah on Saturday — a significant number for an ‘army’ of only 1,000 fighters.

The news site Middle East Eye, which has correspondents all over the Middle East, reported fighters of the Shia militias in Fallujah are convinced that ISIS will be defeated soon.

“This is the end of ISIS,” said one of them.

But others beg to differ.

Avi Issacharoff, a veteran Middle East analyst, thinks the fighting in Fallujah can drag on for months to come:

“Fallujah is extremely important to ISIS; it was the first city to be seized by the terror organization and the base from which it began its violent escapades into the region. As a result, fighting at Fallujah may drag on for months to come,” Issacharoff wrote in an analysis for The Times of Israel.

“It’s fair to assume that ISIS will do almost anything to defend the city and to prove it can survive. But ISIS fighters’ famously fearsome reputation and high motivation — the elements that often gave them the upper hand even when outnumbered — may not be enough to help them out of their current plight,” the TOI reporter concluded.

The fall of Fallujah would deliver a crushing blow to ISIS in Iraq after the terror group lost Ramadi, a large city near Baghdad, at the beginning of this year, Wsternjournalism reported.

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