On Thursday, two explosives-laden U.S.-made Humvees exploded near an Iraqi army convoy outside Ramadi, killing two generals. Islamic State, which captured Ramadi in May, claimed responsibility for the suicide attack, which it says was carried out by four militants. In Baghdad, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi attended Thursday's funeral of Maj. Gen. Abdulrahman Abu Ragheef, the acting chief of the Anbar Operations Command, and Brig. Gen. Safeen Abdulmajid, the head of the Iraqi Army's 10th Division.
The death of the commanders was another setback in the apparently faltering U.S.-backed effort to retake majority-Sunni Anbar Province and Ramadi, its regional capital. ISIS likely captured the Humvees from Iraq's army over the past year; such seizure of Iraqi Army equipment has allowed ISIS to carry out attacks like Thursday's. After the funeral, Iraqi officials vowed vengeance, eventually. "We will get revenge for them sooner or later," said an Iraqi military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool. "We have lost commanders before during the battle against ISIS, but we will never stop until we defeat them."
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