Baghdad: Daesh launched an offensive in Iraq’s western Al Anbar province on Wednesday, capturing three villages near the provincial capital of Ramadi, where fierce clashes were underway between the extremists and government troops, residents said.

The dawn push by Daesh seized the villages of Sjariyah, Al Bu Ghanim and Soufiya, which had been under government control, the residents said, adding the fighting was taking place on the eastern edges of Ramadi, about two kilometres away from local government building.

In Soufiya, the militants bombed a police station and took over a power plant. The residents said air strikes were trying to back up Iraqi troops.

Around noon Wednesday, the militants opened another front with the government troops on three other villages, to the northeast of Ramadi.

Daesh’s push comes as it was dealt a major blow this month, when Iraqi troops pushed the group out of Tikrit, Saddam Hussain’s hometown.

Meanwhile, Iraqi state TV cited Lt. Gen. Abdul Wahab Al Saadi, the regional commander of troops in Salahuddin province as saying that troops started a large-scale operation to recapture areas beyond Tikrit. The TV did not provide more details.

Analysts say entrenched militants and limited Iraqi forces put a full reconquest of Al Anbar out of reach for now.

It is by far Iraq’s largest province, shares a border with militant-held territory in Syria and has historically been a difficult area to control.

Iraqi security forces and allied paramilitaries are on a high after retaking most of Salaheddin province and its capital Tikrit in recent weeks, but those victories will not be easy to replicate.

“Al Anbar differs from Tikrit and Salaheddin more broadly because Daesh is much more entrenched there,” said Kirk Sowell, the publisher of the Inside Iraqi Politics newsletter.

Militant fighters had a presence in Al Anbar long before the June 2014 offensive that saw the government lose around a third of the country to Daesh.

“This will have to be a limited-goals campaign to be successful,” Sowell said.

After recapturing Tikrit, some expected government and allied forces to continue their push towards Mosul, which is Iraq’s second city and Daesh’s main hub.

Anbar is a vast arid expanse traversed by the Euphrates River, stretching east from the Baghdad governorate to the western borders with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria.

Its capital is the city of Ramadi, much of which is under Daesh control, while the militants hold all of the city of Fallujah, which lies between it and Baghdad.

It took 10,000 US Marines to seize Fallujah from insurgents a decade ago and analysts agreed that retaking it now would be too big an ask for Iraqi forces.

The province is packed with experienced fighters and while some local tribes have allied with the government, others are fighting alongside Daesh or sitting on the fence.

Local knowledge is seen as key to clawing back territory along the fertile strip lining the Euphrates, where Daesh has inflicted severe military setbacks to the police and army since last year.

“The Al Anbar operation is likely to be a Ramadi operation,” said Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“The key to controlling Ramadi is to control the Euphrates Valley palm groves and farmlands around the city. This is what the Iraqi security forces have consistently failed to do for over a year now,” he said.

Fighting is ongoing on Anbar’s eastern edge, where Iraqi regular forces on Tuesday launched their latest attempt to retake the Garma area, a 40-minute drive from Baghdad.

A military official from one of the countries in the US-led coalition battling Daesh said Iraqi forces were likely to stick to very specific objectives in a province where thousands of government fighters have perished since 2014.