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“They come to the house and take the children and accuse them of being spies,” stated another source. “If the mom cries and gets upset at them, they accuse of her [sic] being a spy too and take her to the jail and later kill her.”

However, the forces insisted the area is not 100% safe. They withdrew 635 residents to nearby Habbaniyah, but there are many areas that still contain terrorists. The officials arrested 12 alleged militants who attempted to escape by blending in with the civilians.

Terrorism expert Michael Pregent said it is normal for the Islamic State to execute fighters who lose valuable territories. They did the same thing when militants lost Tikrit.

“They continue to lose territory, we’ve seen a growing number of defections and a rise in the number of alleged internal spies – many of whom they have killed mercilessly without demonstrating significant evidence of internal espionage,” said Clint Watts, Fox fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, adding: ISIS pattern of internal killings looks remarkably similar to al Shabaab’s decline in Somalia. As Shabaab lost ground and defectors increased, internal killings and harsher punishments were meted out across the terror group further accelerating the loss of local popular support.

"The United States is prepared to assist the Iraqi Army with additional unique capabilities to help them finish the job, including attack helicopters and accompanying advisers, if requested by Prime Minister Abadi," Carter said.

The idea of providing additional assistance with American pilots flying Apache helicopters or moving American advisers closer to the fight has been described before by Defense Department officials, but this is the first time that Carter has disclosed it as a proposal that could be requested by the Iraqi government.

American Apache helicopters have been in Iraq since last summer but only in a force-protection capacity, though last fall Apache helicopters assisted Iraqi ground troops fighting west of Baghdad.

In July, Iraqi security forces began a military operation to retake Ramadi which had been seized by ISIS earlier this year.

Since then, American military officials have grown frustrated by the slow pace of the Iraqi operation as Iraqi troops faced a tougher than expected ISIS defenses. About 10,000 Iraqi troops have encircled the center portion of the city where it is believed hundreds of ISIS fighters remain.

Mr. Haimour said that at least 500 civilians and security personnel had been killed over the last two days in and around Ramadi, either from fighting or executions. Among the dead, he said, was the 3-year-old daughter of a soldier.

Anbar Province holds painful historical import for the United States as the place where nearly 1,300 soldiers and marines died after the American invasion of 2003. Since the beginning of 2014, months before the fall of Mosul and the start of the American air campaign against Islamic State, the United States has been working with the Iraqi government to push back the extremist group in Anbar, sending vast supplies of weapons and ammunition and, more recently, training Sunni tribal fighters at an airbase in the province.

A senior security official told CNN the level of the Euphrates River had dropped by 1 meter (more than 3 feet) near Amiriyat al-Falluja.

The United Nations warned Thursday that a lack of funding threatens vital aid operations supporting more than 8 million people affected by the conflict in Iraq.

statement. "Humanitarian partners have been doing everything they can to help. But more than 50% of the operation will be shut down or cut back if money is not received immediately."

killing more than 20 soldiers and tribesmen, the source added

At least 15 militants were subsequently killed in a gun battle, before Iraqi and US-led air strikes forced the rest of the attackers to retrea

killed another 15 soldiers and tribesmen, the source said

IS leader in charge of setting up car bombs had been killed along with four of his aides

600 and 1,000 IS militants in Ramadi.

strong defensive system in and around the city, including using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to create minefields

the fighters were all originally from the Kirkuk area and Hawija.

Islamic State has been pushed in recent months out of places closer to Baghdad, such as Ramadi, Fallujah and Beiji.

Instead, Iraqi forces went straight for the high-profile prize of Mosul.

Hawija is now one of Islamic State’s last remaining hubs for assembling car bombs and roadside explosive devices that have devastated cities and towns throughout Iraq and proved to be the militants’ deadliest weapon against allied Iraqi forces pushing into Mosul, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.

Sunni Arabs are the majority in Hawija, as well, though it is unclear whether the local population will back the Sunni extremists of Islamic State, who failed to rally residents of Kirkuk to their side in the recent attack.

There is tension between Baghdad and the Kurdistan regional government over the future of the province and whether it will become part of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region.

“It’s like a knife sticking in the side of northern Iraq,”

“We believe the government hurried up to liberate Mosul before Hawija for political reasons,”

“Military plans are being made now about how to liberate Hawija and where the operation will start.”

Gen. Qadr shared photos he said were taken from a dead militant’s tablet computer after the recent Kirkuk assault that showed a GPS-marked trail he took to get to Kirkuk from Mosul. It included a stop in Hawija.

Thus far the battle has seen far less damage done to Mosul's infrastructure than previous attritional struggles like Ramadi in Iraq or Kobane in Syria, though the daily damage to neighbourhoods has intensified since the offensive restarted.

Iraqi government troops, backed by Shiite militias known as the Popular Mobilization Units and an air campaign by the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition, launched an offensive Monday to retake Falluja, about 65 kilometers (40 miles) west of Baghdad.

The United Nations said it fears an estimated 50,000 civilians trapped in Falluja ahead of the government advance are at extreme risk.

But activists said ISIS is preventing residents from leaving, and U.N. officials have said some have died trying to escape.

About 800 people had been able to flee to safety since Sunday, with most hailing from outlying areas, the U.N. statement said.

Those who made it out described dire humanitarian conditions in Falluja, which has had supply routes cut off since government forces retook nearby Ramadi in December.

rebels complained that the United States has refrained from contributing air support to help them fend off simultaneous attacks by the government and the Islamic State.

Western officials have sought to play down the significance of the militant group’s recent gains, including Palmyra, the strategically placed World Heritage site in Syria, and Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar Province.

Neither American officials nor Syrian insurgents have provided proof of such direct coordination, though it has long been alleged by the insurgents.

The latest attacks are part of a pattern, he said, in which Islamic State fighters have taken advantage of opportunities to attack rival insurgents when they are weak and under government bombardment.

Three-thousand fighters had also completed basic training near Habbaniya military base, east of Ramadi, in preparation for the assault on the city, the source added.

“It was frightening. I’d surrendered myself to these guerillas, men the Americans were hunting and I had found, not knowing if they were friends or if they were going to kill me. I guess I knew it was insane, but I couldn’t help myself,”

They also began filming beheadings on camera, a tactic that has become one of the signatures of Islamic State.

When al-Zarqawi wanted to declare his arrival on the global stage he released a video through Ware. Other insurgents also gave him videos filmed during their actions. This was before the rise of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

“But it was at this moment, where there’s two of them arguing about how to work my camera, that my insurgent escort finally piped up and stepped in and said that they could not kill me. He said that there will be a turf war between our two groups if you kill this man because he’s our guest, and it was only through gritted teeth that Zarqawi’s men literally pushed me back and I became the only Westerner who ever survives Zarqawi’s organisation.”

While the Iraqi Prime Minister has made comments this week that Islamic State did not start in Iraq, but in Syria, Ware said this was “absolutely wrong”.“We of the West removed the regime of Saddam Hussein, we presented a new platform for global jihad, right there in the Middle East. And the man who stepped into that breach was the founder of the Islamic State, a man called Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.”

He said that the only way to regain control of Ramadi was for the local population and the Sunni tribes to rise up again as they did in 2006 and 2007 but this was almost certainly not going to happen. “It’s not a battle that can be won,” he said.

“A soldier once wrote that there’s certain dark chambers of the heart that once opened can never be closed again. And when you’re living that human experience in war, which is stretched to its extreme, you start to find these places within your own self,” Ware told Lateline.

“In so many ways, the experience of going to war is humbling. It brings you a whole new perspective to life. I will never see the world the same way again, and in so many ways, that’s a privilege. That from now on, every day is a gift, for me and for so many of my friends. And I wouldn’t trade that. But it takes work to get there, as any soldier will tell you. Often, the homecoming is harder than the war itself.”

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Last week, the militant group seized the capital of the predominantly Sunni Anbar province, its greatest victory in Iraq since its conquest of Mosul last summer and its declaration of a caliphate spanning swaths of Iraq and Syria. Isis advances have not been limited to Iraq. Last week, the group took control of the historic Syrian city of Palmyra and strategic gas fields nearby after a week-long siege that routed forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. The victory has triggered a humanitarian crisis, due to the flight of thousands of residents.

But Mr. Kerry also made clear that there would be limits on Iran’s role if Tehran did not formally accept that the goal of the conference would be to work out arrangements for a transitional authority that would govern Syria if President Bashar al-Assad could be persuaded to give up power.

On Iraq, meanwhile, Mr. Kerry expressed serious concern about the inroads made by Al Qaeda’s affiliate there, including the capture of major parts of Falluja, in Anbar Province. Mr. Kerry described the group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, as “the most dangerous player in the region.”

“This is a fight that belongs to the Iraqis,” he said. “We are going to do everything that is possible to help them.”

The case of Lockhart — whose brigade had a dozen other men charged with murder or attempted murder after coming home from Iraq — is highlighted in a new report by the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that opposes capital punishment.

"At a time in which the death penalty is being imposed less and less, it is disturbing that so many veterans who were mentally and emotionally scarred while serving their country are now facing execution," said Robert Dunham, the center's executive director.

About 300 veterans are on death row nationwide, about 10 percent of all those condemned to die, the group estimates.

It's unclear how many have been diagnosed with PTSD or have symptoms, but Dunham says that in too many cases, a veteran's mental scars are not examined closely enough by defense lawyers, prosecutors, judges, juries and governors who can commute death sentences.

IS still controls large swaths of Iraq and neighboring Syria and has declared an Islamic "caliphate" on the territory it holds. The extremist group controls Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, as well as the city of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad.