The latest Anbar Province town likely to come under siege from ISIS is the Fallujah suburb of Amariyat al-Fallujah, with reports tonight of ISIS fighters and tanks surrounding the town from several directions.
While Fallujah was the first Anbar city to fall to ISIS, way back in January, the tribal leadership of Amariyat, just 10 miles south, has managed so far to keep them out, turning back previous siege attempts.
Yet with more and more of Anbar falling, ISIS seems willing to commit more resources to the siege this time, and having routed the Iraqi military out of virtually all of its bases in the area, it’s hard to see much help coming from the outside.
The only Iraqi forces in the area, the ones trying to take the nearby provincial capital of Ramadi, have recently fallen back to the al-Asad airbase to the north, a base which itself is increasingly surrounded.
Amariyat al-Fallujah hasn’t previously been seen as a huge strategic priority, but would allow ISIS to exert even greater control over the highway leading into the Babil Province.