"Our military leaders argued that instead of leaving those forces exposed to attacks by ISIL, they would be best used to shore up the defence of Asad air base," he said. "Hit is now 100 percent under ISIS control." Asad, northwest of Hit, is one of the last still under government control in the western province. It is surrounded by desert and a tougher target for ISIS fighters. Other security officials said military aircraft picked up senior officers from the Hit base, and the rest of the force drove in a convoy to Asad. An Iraqi officer and Sunni militia fighters told the Reuters news agency that ISIS looted three armoured vehicles and at least five tanks, and then set the camp ablaze. Government forces have suffered a series of setbacks in Anbar in recent weeks, and officials have warned that their grip on the capital Ramadi was increasingly tenuous. Reports from the Iraqi capital Baghdad, said that ISIS's takeover put nearby towns including Amiri under threat. "Amiri is a very key town, that is where the main supply line from Anbar province into Baghdad and the rest of the south of the country goes from," he said. Up to 180,000 people have been displaced by fighting in and around Hit, the UN office for humanitarian affairs said on Monday. The city had been home to 100,000 people who had fled other areas of Iraq which had fallen to ISIS, it said. During a visit to Baghdad on Monday, the British foreign minister Phillip Hammond said ISIS would only be defeated by "heavy work on the ground" by Iraqi forces. ''We've always understood that the air campaign alone was not going to be decisive in turning the tide against ISIS but it has halted the ISIS advance ... and it is degrading their military capabilities and their economic strength," he said. "The heavy work on the ground is going to have been done by Iraqi forces and it is going to have been done by the Sunni communities in the areas that ISIL occupies.''
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