A US military spokesman said additional checkpoints were set up "to restrict the flow of insurgents, but citizens will still be able to enter and leave the city."
BAGHDAD: US and Iraqi forces were surrounding the Sunni rebel town of Ramadi on Sunday by setting up new checkpoints on all the entry and exit roads in a bid to bottle up the insurgents.
A US military spokesman said additional checkpoints were set up "to restrict the flow of insurgents, but citizens will still be able to enter and leave the city."
"This is just one part of a long-term plan to restore stability in Ramadi," the spokesman said.
He said the operation was still "part of the continuous operations that the coalition forces and Iraqi forces have been conducting for several months."
But on Sunday the forces were "getting more into it and focusing on multiple sites used by the insurgents to plan and conduct terrorist attacks and store weapons."
The operation was being conducted jointly by US soldiers, marines and Iraqi troops, with the US military's 1st Brigade of the 1st armored division acting as lead unit. He said the forces had set up assembling areas for displaced people from the town to the east and west of Ramadi, but added: "We have no idea how many people have left their homes."
Earlier on Sunday the military insisted that it had neither launched "any major operation" nor deployed additional troops to the restive city after the BBC reported overnight troop movements on its southern outskirts.
"Our operations in Ramadi have been on for quite some time now, and there is no major operation launched at the moment such as the Fallujah one," military spokesman Major William Wilhoite said.
"There has been no increase or decrease in the level of troops in Ramadi. They are at the same level since the last six months," he added.
Fallujah west of Baghdad was the target of a massive US-backed counter-insurgency operation in November 2004 that saw its civilian population emptied and many of its buildings badly damaged.
Ramadi, the capital of the overwhelmingly Sunni Arab western province of Al-Anbar, is an insurgent stronghold where US and Iraqi government troops come under frequent attack.
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