Troops closing in on Mosul, says PM
Iraqi and Kurdish forces make faster- than- expected progress in fight for city
The offensive to seize back Mosul from Isis ( Islamic State) is going faster than planned, Iraq’s Prime Minister said yesterday, as Iraqi and Kurdish forces launched a new military operation to clear villages on the city’s outskirts.
Howitzer and mortar fire started at dawn, hitting a group of villages held by Isis about 10km to 20km from Mosul, while helicopters flew overhead, according to Reuters reporters at two frontline locations north and east of Mosul.
To the sound of machine gun fire and explosions, dozens of black Humvees of the elite Counter Terrori sm Service ( CTS), mounted with machine guns, headed toward Bartella, an abandoned Christian village just east of Mosul.
Militants were using suicide carbombs, roadside bombs and snipers to resist the attack, and were pounding surrounding areas with mortars, a CTS commander said.
Hours later, the head of Iraq’s Special Forces, Lieutenant General Talib Shaghati, told reporters at a command centre near the frontline that troops had surrounded Bartella and entered the centre of the village. Two soldiers were hurt and none killed, and they had killed at least 15 militants, he said. “After Bartella is Mosul, God willing.”
Iraqi state TV later quoted a CTS spokesman as saying about 80 insurgents were killed in fighting in Bartella and 11 suicide car- bombs destroyed.
A United States service member also died yesterday from wounds sustained in an improvised explosive device blast in northern Iraq, the US- led military coalition said in a statement.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a US defence official said the incident took place near Mosul. Roughly 5000 US forces are in Iraq. More than 100 of them are embedded with Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces involved with the Mosul offensive, advising commanders and helping them ensure coalition air power hits the right targets, officials say.
The fighting around Mosul has also forced 5640 people to flee their homes in the last three days, the Inter- People were forced to flee in three days national Organisation for Migration said.
Prime Minister Haidar al- Abadi, addressing anti- Isis coalition allies meeting in Paris by a video link, said: “The forces are pushing toward the town more quickly than we thought and more quickly than we had programmed.”
Isis denied that government forces had advanced. Under the headline “The crusade on Nineveh gets a lousy start”, the group’s weekly online magazine Al- Nabaa said it repelled all assaults on all fronts, killing dozens in ambushes and suicide attacks and destroying dozens of vehicles.
The US- led coalition that includes France, Italy, Britain, Canada and other Western nations is providing air and ground support to the forces that are closing in on the city in an operation that began on Monday.
Mosul i s the last big stronghold held by Isis in Iraq and around five times the size of any other city the group has held. The push to capture it i s expected to become the biggest battle fought in Iraq since the 2003 US- led invasion.
The United Nations says Mosul could require the biggest humanitarian relief operation in the world, with worst- case scenario forecasts of up to a million people being uprooted by the battle.
About 1.5 million residents are still believed to be inside the city, and Isis has a history of using civilians as human shields. French Foreign Minister Jean- Marc Ayrault said controls were being put in place to check jihadists were not trying to insert themselves among those fleeing Mosul.
Isis swept into Mosul and other parts of northern Iraq in 2014 and has used extreme violence to administer a self- proclaimed caliphate there and in parts of neighbouring Syria.
The area around Mosul is one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse parts of Iraq, and Western countries backing the assault are concerned that communities feel safe as the government forces advance, to avoid revenge attacks or ethnic and sectarian bloodletting as fighters are driven out.