And they haven’t even breached the city limits yet.
Via AJ:
Reports say at least 130 Iraqi soldiers have been killed in a series of attacks by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group near the city of Fallujah in Anbar province.
The first attack happened at dawn on Wednesday when 10 suicide bombers belonging to ISIL, also known as ISIS, hit the town of Kubaisah before storming the nearby village of Al Sejar, and then attacked an army convoy to the south of Fallujah at Amiriyat al-Fallujah with roadside bombs, military sources told Al Jazeera.
After more than a week of operations aimed at retaking Fallujah, which lies just 50km west of Baghdad, the Iraqi army – made up of the military, police and Shia units, and backed by air power from a US-led coalition – has been unable to reach the city centre.
Al Jazeera’s Omar Al Saleh, reporting from Erbil, said the situation was calm on the southern front of Fallujah after Wednesday’s bloody clashes.
“ISIL seems to be well entrenched and has seeded the area with IEDs, so that might explain why Iraqi forces and its militias have been slow to advance.”