Battle to retake remaining IS areas in Mosul will be ‘hardest’

MOSUL: The last handful of neighbourhoods held by Islamic State militants in Mosul will likely be the most difficult to retake, despite nearly eight months of street-by-street fighting, the US officer in charge of advising Iraqi forces in the area predicted.

It’s going to be “extremely violent”, Colonel Patrick Work, commanding officer of the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, said during a phone interview at the weekend.

Work is in charge of about 1 800 soldiers who are helping “advise and assist” the Iraqi forces.

“The hardest days are still in front of them.”

Work declined to give a timeline for the remainder of the operation in the western part of the city, but some Iraqi officers have said the battle could be over by the end of the week, in conjunction with the start of Ramadaan.

Yet with some of the most difficult areas of the city still held by militants, and tens of thousands of civilians still trapped in their homes, the fighting could likely last well into the weeks ahead.

“It all depends on the circumstances of the battle. Now they are entirely besieged and there is no way out, it’s going to be either fighting, or giving up and trying to infiltrate with the civilians,” said lieutenant-general Sami al-Aridhi, a commander of two of the US-trained Counter Terrorism Service task forces.

Iraqi forces are now in the final stages of an operation, launched earlier this month, that saw them retake nearly the entirety of the north-western part of the city.

An earlier offensive that started in February stalled after coming up against heavy resistance in the southern part of the city.