Jihadists lose airport to Iraq
US-backed forces drive out ISIS after four-hour operation in Mosul
Baghdad, Feb. 23: Iraqi security forces have recaptured Mosul airport, a key part of the government’s offensive to drive the socalled Islamic State (ISIS) from the western half of the city.
The operation took four hours. ISIS continued to fire mortars at the airport from further inside the city after losing the ground to the army. Eastern Mosul was retaken last month.
The massive operation, Iraq’s largest in years, has involved tens of thousands of security personnel and could yet last several more weeks or months.
Iraqi federal police units, backed by regular army forces, entered the airport Thursday morning, according to two police officials who said heavy clashes were underway hours later with IS militants hunkered down inside several airport buildings. The officials said coalition troops were with the advancing forces, though they didn’t specify the nationalities of the foreign forces.
Elite forces from the Counter-Terrorism Service simultaneously attacked further to the west and advanced towards the Ghazlani military base, where some of them were stationed before ISIS seized the city in 2014. The airport and the alGhazlani base are on Mosul’s southern outskirts on the western side of the Tigris river.
Meanwhile, Hashed alShaabi (Popular Mobilisation) paramilitaries continued to clear desert areas further west and to tighten the noose around Tal Afar, a large town still under ISIS control. They have cut the road between Mosul and Tal Afar, as well as ISIS’s supply lines to Syria.
Iraqi forces are receiving substantial air support from the US-led coalition as well as from Iraqi army aviation helicopters.
US coalition advisers were seen on the front lines Thursday as Iraqi forces advanced on the airport. On Sunday, after weeks of preparations, Iraqi forces officially launched the operation to take Mosul’s western half, with the regular army and federal police forces taking part in the initial push. —