Iraqi security forces and paramilitaries deploy in Al-Nibaie area, northwest of Baghdad, during an operation aimed at cutting off Daesh militants in Anbar province before a major offensive to retake the city of Ramadi. — AFP

BAGHDAD — Iraqi forces took up positions around Ramadi on Wednesday, seizing two districts after clashes with Daesh (the so-called IS), as the explicitly sectarian name Shiite militias gave the operation caused unease.



The Daesh also came under pressure in neighboring Syria, where Kurdish fighters expelled the militants from more than a dozen Christian villages in the northeast.



Iraqi forces fought Daesh militants on the southern outskirts of Ramadi, the provincial capital of Iraq's western Anbar province which the militants seized on May 17.



They moved into the districts of Taesh and Humeyrah and also entered the neighboring Anbar university compound, an army colonel on the ground told AFP.



"Iraqi security and Hashed forces took control of both neighborhoods. They also managed to enter the university but have yet to liberate it," he said.



Hashed Al-Shaabi is an umbrella group for mostly Shiite militias and volunteers that the government called in after Ramadi fell to Daesh.



The recaptured areas are outside the main road circling the city from the south and government forces continued their effort to seal off Ramadi, but an assault to retake it had not started in earnest.



The three-day Daesh blitz, which saw the city fall after a year and a half of resistance and dealt Baghdad its worst military setback in almost a year, led to a chaotic retreat of the security forces.



Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi had been reluctant to send in the Hashed Al-Shaabi. With backing from the US, he had favored training up local tribal forces to be incorporated in the Hashed, a solution seen as more palatable to the province's overwhelmingly Sunni population.  — Agencies