Ramadi residents emerge from rubble

Terrified families waving white flags are emerging from homes reduced to rubble in the Iraqi city of Ramadi.

Five days after the army recaptured the city centre, government troops are still battling Islamic State fighters holed up in surrounding areas.

The provincial capital in the fertile Euphrates River valley west of Baghdad is the biggest city to have been recaptured from Islamic State, and the first retaken by Iraq's army since it collapsed in the path of the militants' advance 18 months ago.

The victory has been hailed as a turning point by the Iraqi government, which says its rebuilt army will soon march on Islamic State's main Iraqi stronghold Mosul further north, and defeat the group in Iraq in 2016.

As an Iraqi army column advanced through the ruined city, an elderly woman emerged from a home waving a white flag on the end of a stick.

Soon, she was followed by children, a wounded woman being pushed in a wheelbarrow and men carrying small children in their arms. They flinched as explosions could be heard in the distance.

"They (Islamic State) are not Muslims, they are beasts," one of the men rescued from the central district told a Reuters television cameraman accompanying the advancing Iraqi column.

"We thank our security forces, from the soldiers to the generals. They saved us," the man said before breaking into tears.

Another man told Reuters television that the fighters had killed seven people who refused to come with them to another district where they were making a stand.

Major Salam Hussein said the militants were using families as human shields. More than 52 families had been rescued so far in the city, he said.

Another military officer, reached by telephone from the battlefield, said security forces were using loudspeakers to urge civilians to head toward the advancing troops, before calling air strikes from a US-led coalition on residential blocks still held by the militants.

The presence of civilians was delaying the advance of the troops eastward from the central district they captured on Sunday, where the provincial government is located, the officer said.

"Warplanes do not strike any target in central Ramadi unless they are sure there are no civilians nearby," said the officer.

Provincial police chief Brigadier Hadi Rizaiyj said police were investigating males who remained behind in Ramadi to determine whether they had links with Islamic State.

"The counter-terrorism forces are freeing civilians in distress and delivering them to the Anbar province police; the police then have names of wanted people," Rizaiyj said.

"If we can prove that a civilian had a brother fighting with Daesh and he helped him with information or something similar, then we keep him with us" before turning them over to the judiciary on terrorism charges, he said.

Originally published as Ramadi residents emerge from rubble