A senior Iranian official said on Monday that his country was ready to help confront Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants who have seized the Iraqi city of Ramadi, and that he was certain the city would be “liberated” from their grip.

Iraqi Shia paramilitaries were preparing on Monday to deploy en masse to the western province of Anbar after ISIL militants overran Ramadi, the provincial capital, in their biggest victory since last summer.

“If the Iraqi government officially asks the Islamic Republic of Iran ... to carry out any step that helps Iraq to confront (them)... then the Islamic Republic of Iran will meet this call,” Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader, told Reuters Television.

“I firmly believe that eventually Ramadi, like Tikrit, will be liberated from the grip of extremist terrorists,” he said.

While Iraqi government forces and Shia paramilitaries recaptured the city of Tikrit from ISIL last month, the northern city of Mosul remains under the control of the ultra-hardline terrorists.

(Source: Reuters