The battle for Ramadi.

Iraqi forces are fighting Islamic State militants for control of Ramadi, the crucial western provincial capital. For the first time in months, Iraq’s military has reached the city’s center. Regaining control of Ramadi would deliver the biggest loss for Islamic State militants since they began their expansion across Iraq last year. Iraqi forces have ringed the city for months, but only kicked off their assault over the past several days after clearing rings of buried bombs before making the push. There’s no indication that the thousands of Iraqi troops will take the city soon, however. The bloody fights to retake the much smaller towns of Tikrit and Baiji earlier this year lasted months, and both required a scorched earth campaign to push the last ISIS holdouts out. Ramadi is a much bigger city, and carries much more symbolic weight, for both the Islamic State and Baghdad as either of those two towns, which only increases the prospects of a long, bitter struggle.