Ar Ramadi [key], town, provincial capital, central Iraq, on the Euphrates River. It is the eastern terminus of a highway across the desert from the Mediterranean Sea. The town was founded in 1869. The British won an important victory over the Turks there in 1917. The name also appears as Ramadie or Rumadiya. The town was a center of Sunni insurgent resistance following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and later was attacked (2014) and then (2015) held by Islamic State Sunni militants. Much of the city was destroyed or damaged in the fighting.
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