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Militants, booby-trapped houses in Ramadi to delay civilians' return


    BAGHDAD (Reuters) - About 700 Islamic State fighters are suspected to be hiding in the centre and eastern outskirts of Ramadi days after Iraqi forces claimed victory over the militants in the western city, the U.S.-led coalition said on Wednesday.

    Much of the centre of the Anbar provincial capital still needs to be cleared of explosives laid by the jihadist insurgents who seized the city in May, delaying the return of tens of thousands of civilians who fled to Baghdad and other parts of the country, the coalition said.

    The Iraqi army retook Ramadi on Sunday in its first big victory against the hardline Sunni Islamists who swept through a third of Iraq in 2014, after months of cautious advances backed by coalition air strikes.

    "Within what we call central Ramadi they estimate still up to 400 Daesh (Islamic State) members and then once you go east of that towards Falluja you've got about 300 out there in that direction," U.S. Army Captain Chance McCraw, a military intelligence officer with the U.S.-led coalition, told reporters in Baghdad.

    (Reporting By Stephen Kalin; Editing by Angus MacSwan)