US army advisor: 6,000 Iraqi soldiers fled battlefield in Ramadi

A former advisor to the US Army Central Command, Ali Khedery said he has information which reveals that nearly 6,000 Iraqi forces fled the battlefield in Ramadi in the face of only 150 members of the Islamic State (ISIS).

In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Khedery said: “A Kurdish official showed me statistical data and told me that according to their intelligence information nearly 6,000 Iraqi police officers were defeated in the face of 150 members of the Islamic State militant group… ten car bombs have been used and a large proportion of weapons have been seized.”

“This is a tremendous setback,” he added.

Khederi said he met with several Iraqi officials over the past few days, noting that what he heard was terrifying.

“All of them expressed their concern and fear of things I have not heard since the worst days of the Iraqi civil war in 2006 and 2007… Strategically, I believe the developments in Ramadi represent a major setback for Iraq and the international community and shows that the strategy does not work there. In other words, there is no military solution to this problem,” he said.

Remarking on the deployment of Shia militias to the fight to restore Ramadi, Khederi said: “The truth is that ISIS is a group that must be defeated and Sunni extremist militia like ISIS cannot be defeated by Shia religious militias.”