Iraqi forces retake two more neighbourhoods in west Mosul

IS chemical weapons expert killed: police

MOSUL, Iraq, April 20, (Agencies): Iraqi forces retook two more neighbourhoods in west Mosul on Thursday, tightening the noose around jihadists holed up in the Old City, commanders said.

“The forces completed the liberation of Al-Thawra neighbourhood,” Sabah al-Noman, spokesman for the elite CounterTerrorism Service, told AFP.

An officer with federal police forces also deployed in west Mosul confirmed that the neighbourhood, which lies just west of the Old City, had been retaken from the Islamic State group.

The Joint Operations Command coordinating the fight against the jihadists nationwide said the Nasr neighbourhood was also retaken on Thursday.

The head of Iraq’s federal police, Raed Shakir Jawdat, also said in a statement that Iraqi forces had killed a senior IS operative, who had been in charge of chemical weapons for the group in Mosul, in a guided missile strike in the Zanjili neighbourhood.

A US official said on Wednesday that Iraqi forces working alongside US and Australian military advisers had been targeted in an IS attack that used a low-level chemical agent in west Mosul.

Major General Joseph Martin said nobody died as a result of the attack.

Iraqi forces in mid-October last year launched a huge operation, their largest in years, to retake second city Mosul.

They retook the side of the city that lies east of the Tigris river in January and launched a push on remaining IS fighters in western Mosul, which is more densely populated and has seen fierce fighting.

On the west bank, Iraqi forces control southern neighbourhoods and are slowly surrounding the Old City, whose narrow streets are expected to make federal operations very difficult.

An estimated 400,000 civilians are believed to still be there, unwilling or unable to leave because any escape would be too dangerous or because the jihadists are using them as human shields.

The loss of Mosul would be a death blow to the “caliphate” IS proclaimed after capturing the city in a massive offensive in June 2014.

According to an Iraqi military spokesman, the jihadists only control seven percent of Iraq, down from the 40 percent of the national territory over which they ruled three years ago.

The only two other significant towns IS still holds are Hawija and Tal Afar. The jihadists also control territory in remote areas of western Iraq, near the Syrian border.

Iraqi forces on Thursday launched a fresh push against IS-held villages there, as part of a months-old operation to retake areas along the Euphrates in western Anbar province.

A senior officer said the forces involved in the operation included the army, local tribal fighters and military advisers from the US-led coalition as- sisting Iraq in the anti-IS war.

Meanwhile, Iraq’s Shi’ite ruling coalition would oppose Kurdish plans to hold a referendum on independence after the defeat of Islamic State, its president, Ammar al-Hakim, has said.

Speaking to Reuters in an interview in Cairo, Hakim advised the Kurds against any unilateral move to annex a disputed oil-rich region which they had gained during the war against the jihadists.

“If this referendum happens, it will be unilateral,” said Hakim, who is president of the National Alliance, a coalition of the main Shi’ite political groups including Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s Dawa party.

“We will insist on dialogue” as a mean to resolve the disagreement, the influential cleric said when asked what the Shi’ite parties would do if the Kurds insist on holding the referendum.

“We believe that the politics of accomplished facts and drawing borders with blood hasn’t succeeded in any country of the world and won’t have good results in Iraq either.”

Iraq’s majority Shi’ite Arab community is located mainly in the south while the Kurds and the Sunni Arabs live in opposite corners of the north. The centre around Baghdad is mixed.

Iraq’s main Kurdish parties announced this month a plan to hold a referendum on independence this year.

The Kurds say the expected “yes” outcome will strengthen their hand in talks on self-determination with Baghdad and would not mean automatically declaring independence.

“The purpose of the referendum is to seek out the opinion of the Kurds and then start a dialogue with Baghdad,” Massoud Barzani, the president of Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), told reporters on Thursday in the Iraqi Kurdish capital Erbil.

The Kurdish forces control more territory now than the area on which the KRG was established after the USled invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Iraqi Kurdish independence has been historically opposed by Iraq and also its neighbors, Iran, Turkey and Syria, as they fear the contagion for their own Kurdish populations.

Iraq’s Kurds have advanced the most toward their long-held dream of independence. Iraq has been led by the Shi’ites since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni.

The Kurds have their own armed force, the Peshmerga, which in 2014 prevented Islamic State from capturing the oil region of Kirkuk after the Iraqi army fled in the face of the militants. They are effectively running the region also claimed by Turkmen and Arabs.

Hardline Iranian-backed Iraqi Shi’ite militias have threatened to expel the Kurds by force from this region and other disputed areas.

Hakim however downplayed the risk of miltary confrontation betweent the Shi’ite and the Kurds.