Iraqi forces face tough resistance

Snipers, mortars stall advance in Mosul

MOSUL, March 13, (RTRS): Iraqi forces battling Islamic State faced tough resistance from snipers and mortar rounds on Monday as they tried to advance on Mosul’s Old City and a bridge across the Tigris river in their campaign to retake the western part of the city.

Progress by Rapid Response units was slowed by heavy rain on Monday morning, but they were only 100 metres (yards) from the Iron Bridge which connects the Old City with the eastern side of Mosul, military officials said.

Since starting the campaign in October, Iraqi forces with US-led coalition support have recaptured eastern Mosul and around 30 percent of the west from militants who are outnumbered but fiercely defending their last stronghold in Iraq.

Federal police and Rapid Response brigades, an elite Interior Ministry unit, said at the weekend they had entered the Bab al-Tob area of the Old City, where fighting is expected to be toughest because of its narrow alleyways where armoured vehicles cannot pass. But the advance there stalled on Monday.

“Due to the bad rainy weather, operations have been halted for now. We are facing stiff resistance from the DAESH (Islamic State) fighters with sniper shots and mortars,” a rapid response unit officer told Reuters.

A Reuters reporter on the ground said mortar rounds and sniper fire hit near the Mosul museum area, which Iraqi forces had seized from militants a few days ago.

Troops exchanged fire with snipers, while trying to drag blinds made of blankets and curtains across streets to obscure their movements. Heavy explosions later hit a hotel where Islamic State gunmen had been returning fire.

“We moving on the old bridge ... and then we will free that area and hopefully in a few days we’ll liberate the west side of Mosul,” said one Iraqi captain fighting there.

Federal police forces also fighting in areas close to the Iron Bridge were battling pockets of militants in Bab al-Tob district and carrying out house to house searches, a federal police commander’s spokesman said.

A military statement said on Monday that Iraqi elite Counter Terrorism Service troops, known as CTS, managed to retake al-Nafut district of west Mosul.

As many as 600,000 civilians are caught with the militants inside Mosul, which Iraqi forces effectively sealed off from the remaining territory that Islamic State controls in Iraq and Syria. The Iraqi forces include army, special forces, Kurdish peshmerga and Shi’ite militias.

More than 200,000 Mosul residents have been displaced since the start of the campaign in October, of which more than 65,000 fled their homes in the past two weeks alone, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

Residents fled from the Wadi Hajjar district carrying bags and belongings through the muddy streets to areas controlled by the army before being transported out by truck.

“It was a nightmare and we are finally done with it. It cannot be described. There is no water and there is no food and nothing,” said Ghanem Mohamed, one of the residents who fled.

Capturing the Iron Bridge would mean Iraqi forces control three of the five bridges spanning the Tigris river between eastern and western Mosul, all which have been damaged by Islamic State fighters and US-led air strikes. The southernmost two have already been retaken by Iraqi forces.

Losing Mosul would be a major strike against Islamic State. It is by far the largest city the militants have held since their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself leader of a self-styled caliphate spanning Iraq and Syria from a mosque in Mosul in the summer of 2014.

Evidence As Iraqi forces slowly take territory from the group, more evidence is emerging of war crimes committed by the Sunni Islamist militants, who targeted Shi’ite Muslims and religious minorities as well as opponents from their own sect.

Iraqi special forces are engaged in a punishing and paranoid close-quarters battle against Islamic State in western Mosul as they seek to drive the jihadists out of their last urban bastion in Iraq and deal a major blow to their selfstyled caliphate.

Mosul is divided by the Tigris river that runs through it, north to south. Iraqi forces, supported by a US-led coalition, pushed into the western side of the city last month after recapturing the east in an offensive that began late last year.

The urban warfare is now more intense than ever, both because Islamic State fighters have been backed into one half of the city and because the west — home to the old city and city centre — is more densely populated.

“The fighting is at much closer quarters. It was street-by-street — now it’s house-by-house,” said Iraqi commando Alaa Shaker, 32, a member of the elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS).

“We are often literally in the same house, on the roof, and Daesh (Islamic State) is downstairs. Sometimes we drop grenades. If there are civilians, families in the homes, we shout to them to take cover inside a room.”

Seif Rasheed, a 28-year-old CTS medic, said one commando had been killed earlier that day in the same area, shot through the head, and another wounded, shot through the neck and hip.

“DAESH are hiding in homes, opening doors and shooting at troops from just a few metres away,” he said.

The men were speaking as they took a break from the fighting to eat lunch in the courtyard of a western Mosul home, in a neighbourhood recaptured from Islamic State the day before.

No one can drop their guard. Shaker paused mid-mouthful, stood up, and brought over two assault rifles that were leaning against the wall, setting them down within arm’s reach.

“Just in case,” he said, miming that a member of the family living inside might otherwise pick one up and turn it on the soldiers eating there. “That hasn’t happened so far, but you have to be careful — we don’t know these people. Islamic State have left supporters and sleeper cells behind.”

Mosul, in the far north of Iraq, is by far the largest city in the caliphate that Islamic State declared over parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014. The few thousand militants still fighting in the west of the city are overwhelmingly outnumbered by a 100,000-strong array of Iraqi forces, and the head of the CTS said they could be dislodged within weeks.

But the militants’ tactics so far in the Mosul battle — digging in among civilians, and using suicide car bombs, snipers and a network of tunnels to launch waves of attacks — have enabled them to hold out much longer than the government’s initial predictions.

The CTS had stationed armoured Humvee vehicles in the street outside the Mosul home, and officers inside studied a map on a mobile phone as their radio constantly crackled with updates.

The frontline of the battle had moved forward, but the neighbourhood was not completely secured.

Rasheed peered down a street outside, but cautioned against walking down it. Seconds later, an Islamic State shell slammed down into the road, sending shrapnel fizzing off in all directions. Rasheed moved indoors again.

The impact of explosions from the fighting could be felt.

Another CTS commando, Wamid Salam, calmly identified the blasts as rocket-propelled grenades.

Salam, 33, said he was looking forward to his next leave, to visit his pregnant wife in southern Iraq.