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‘About 700 IS militants suspected to be hiding in Ramadi’

Iraqi security forces arrive near a government complex in Ramadi on Monday.

 The U.S.-led coalition on Wednesday said about 700 Islamic State (IS) militants 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.

Much of the centre of the Anbar provincial capital still needs to be cleared of explosives laid by the militants 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 extremists 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.