The U.S. military took a crushing blow yesterday when terror group Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) successfully took over Ramadi, a town in western Iraq that holds significant strategic value for the effort to halt the group in their tracks.

The takeover caused both U.S. and Iraqi government forces to stage a desperate retreat and give up control over the city to the Sunni militants. An estimated total of 500 civilians and security forces were killed since the relentless ISIS attack on Ramadi last Thursday. Anbar province's governor, through his spokesperson Muhannad Haimor, relayed the retreat to the press. "The city has fallen," Haimor said. Military officials also said that those who remained in the city risk being massacred by the terror group.

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Military officials said that the ISIS fighters overwhelmed government forces with a wave of suicide bombings throughout Thursday and Friday, effectively taking most of the city in the process. Haimor credited the city's takeover to the aggressive tactics ISIS employed over the past few days, which included the use of large car bombs.

Furthermore, the collapse of Iraqi government forces occurred despite the number of airstrikes the U.S. coalition made on various militant positions around Ramadi. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, this fact "underscores the limitations of air strikes without an effective military partner on the ground."

Despite the news, a U.S. military spokesperson for Operation Inherent Resolve, a bombing campaign that targeted ISIS camps in Iraq and Syria, said that Ramadi remains contested. Moreover, Brigadier General Thomas Weidly, the operation's chief of staff, told Pentagon reporters that overall, ISIS remains on the offensive.

Weidly assured the press that this takeover is similar to the previous attacks on Ramadi that the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) has been able to repel in the past. "And we see this one being similar to those, where the ISF will eventually take back terrain that's been lost at this point," Weidly told reporters. The pentagon confirmed yesterday that the U.S.-led coalition will give full support to Iraqi forces until the city is returned to government custody.

TagsISIS, ramadi, US coalition, Operation Inherent Resolve