BAGHDAD: Iraqi forces battled ISIS on separate fronts Thursday, ramping up operations to retake Beiji and Ramadi, two of the conflict’s worst flashpoints. The Beiji area has seen almost uninterrupted fighting since ISIS swept across Iraq last year, but top officers said Thursday the Beiji refinery, the country’s largest, was almost secure.

There were contradictory statements from the armed forces and the allied paramilitary Popular Mobilization units on whether or not the refinery had been fully retaken.

Senior commanders said it had been “completely cleared” but the Joint Operations Command said late Wednesday the sprawling complex had not yet been extensively swept by Iraqi forces.

A lieutenant colonel speaking from inside the complex told AFP troops had rained rockets on ISIS positions there over the past two days. He said large numbers of wounded militants were thought to have been evacuated to nearby Sharqat and Hawijah.

The refinery, which once produced 300,000 barrels per day of refined products meeting half of Iraq’s needs, is said to have been damaged beyond repair and is no longer of huge strategic interest.

However, the Beiji area is at a crossroads between several key front lines and officers said there is a push north past the refinery to further cut ISIS supply lines.

“We managed to cut off supply routes and Daesh’s ability to communicate between the areas of Tikrit, Sharqat and Anbar,” said a senior officer from Salahuddin province, using an Arab acronym for ISIS.

Hadi al-Ameri and several other top commanders from the Popular Mobilization units, an umbrella organization dominated by Tehran-backed militia groups, were supervising operations in the area.

Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the foreign wing of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, was reported in Iraqi media to have been the mastermind of the latest Beiji offensive.

Key positions in the Beiji area, around 200 kilometers north of Baghdad, have changed hands several times since ISIS launched a massive offensive in June 2014.

Top army officers said control of Beiji is essential to ensure the success of operations against ISIS in most of its remaining strongholds.

Among them is Ramadi, where security forces backed by Sunni tribal fighters and U.S.-led coalition airstrikes have said they are poised to launch a much-delayed assault.

The government resisted for more than a year in the capital of the western Anbar province until ISIS forces blitzed them out with dozens of suicide truck bombs in mid-May.

After what was Baghdad’s most stinging setback this year in the war against ISIS, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Popular Mobilization units leaders vowed to retake Ramadi within days.

But the militants’ sophisticated network of defenses using explosives and taking advantage of searing summer temperatures thwarted plans for an immediate fight back.

The coalition said Tuesday additional training on urban warfare had since been provided to troops, who were now ready to go on the offensive. “We now believe that battlefield conditions are set for the ISF [Iraqi security forces] to push into the city,” spokesman Col. Steve Warren said, estimating at 600-1,000 the number of ISIS fighters still in Ramadi.

Iraqi forces this week took up positions just north of the city center, in a neighborhood called Albu Farraj, security officials said.

They also moved Thursday into Tamim, a southwestern neighborhood, a police brigadier general said.

“Iraqi forces are coming in as we speak from the south and the west, with aerial support from the coalition and the Iraqi air force,” he said.

The militants’ weapon of choice is the explosives-laden vehicle launched against enemy targets by a suicide driver, as seen in May.

Anbar Operations Command chief Maj. Gen. Ismail Mahalawi told AFP that coalition strikes struck two suicide car bombs Thursday before they could hit their targets in the Albu Farraj area.

North of Beiji, federal and Popular Mobilization forces reached their northernmost positions since Baghdad launched a counteroffensive against ISIS last year.

Fighters were focused Thursday on the town of Makhoul and working their way up the main road to approach ISIS-held Sharqat and further isolate Hawijah, to the east.

Kurdish peshmerga forces have been pushing south from Kirkuk in recent weeks to pile pressure on the Hawijah area.

Some 200 Sunni tribal fighters also from Kirkuk Wednesday joined the Hawijah battlefield under Popular Mobilization command.