Iraq government forces advance in Mosul as ISIL’s resolve falters
Attacks win ground but tough battle awaits in Old City
MOSUL // Iraqi special forces battling ISIL yesterday pushed deeper into west Mosul, where a commander said militant resistance was showing signs of weakening under repeated assaults and simultaneous attacks on their forces in Syria.
But the battle for Mosul’s Old City – which could result in some of the toughest fighting of the operation – has not begun.
Iraq’s counter-terrorism ser- vice attacked the Al Amil Al Oula neighbourhood of west Mosul early yesterday and engaged in battle with the extremists, said Staff Maj Gen Maan Al Saadi.
Iraq’s joint operations command later announced that CTS troops had retaken that area along with another neighbourhood, Al Amil Al Thaniyah.
Maj Gen Al Saadi said militant resistance had fallen after a string of losses since the launch of the government’s assault on west Mosul on February 19.
“The enemy has begun to collapse. They have lost many of their combat capabilities. Today, the enemy sent [suicide car bombs], but not in the numbers that they sent at the beginning of the battle,” he said.
After launching the offensive on Mosul, it took three months for Iraqi forces to retake the whole east bank of the Tigris river that runs through the city.
They then set their sights on the more densely populated west side of the city. More than 215,000 people are displaced as a result of the battle for Mosul, according to the International Organisation for Migration. Almost a quarter of the displaced – more than 50,000 people – have fled west Mosul since February 25, the organisation said, but about 750,000 civilians were estimated to have stayed on under ISIL rule.
In recent days Iraqi forces have retaken neighbourhoods and a museum where ISIL militants filmed themselves destroying priceless artefacts.
In another sign that the extremists are feeling the squeeze, their chief, Abubakr Al Baghdadi, was reported to have abandoned Mosul, leaving local commanders behind to oversee ISIL’s defence of the city. “He was in Mosul at some point before the offensive ... [but] he left before we isolated Mosul and Tal Afar,” a US official said.
MOSUL // The elegant columns of a west Mosul church stand plastered with ISIL propaganda after the group’s infamous religious police took over the place of Christian worship.
The sign above the door of Um Al Mauna ( Our Mother of Perpetual Help) in Iraq’s second city reads “Chaldean Catholic church”, but its extremist occupants had other ideas.
“No entry, by order of the Islamic State Hesba division (the religious police),” they wrote on the building’s outside wall.
Five extremists lie dead outside, bodies contorted and horribly disfigured by the wounds that killed them, after Iraqi forces retook the neighbourhood from ISIL this week.
The church “was an important office for the authorities responsible for making sure that male residents of Mosul had a beard, wore short robes and followed their extremist convictions,” said Lt Col Abdulamir Al Mohammedawi of the elite rapid response division.
Iraqi forces are pushing an offensive to retake all of Mosul, ISIL’s last major urban bastion in the country, after retaking its eastern side in January.
ISIL took control of the city in 2014, imposing their interpretation of Islamic law on its inhabitants.
Above the door of the ochre- coloured church, ISIL members have damaged a stone cross. Not far away, they seem to have tried to rip another from a metal door off its hinges.
Not a single crucifix, or statue of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary has survived in the building’s nave, from which all symbols of Christianity were removed.
Only the grey marble altar remains. In the church’s empty alcoves lies the base of a statue that was destroyed, decorated with red and yellow flowers.
The posters on the marble columns give an indication of what life was like under ISIL.
One shows religious invocations to repeat in the mornings and evenings, while another explains the benefits of praying in a mosque.
A “town document” lists the 14 rules of life in Mosul under ex- tremist rule: “The trade and consumption of alcohol, drugs and cigarettes is banned.” Women should wear modest attire and appear in public only “when necessary”, it says.
A pamphlet explains the different forms of corporal punishment prescribed for theft, alcohol consumption, adultery and homosexuality.
It comes complete with chilling illustrations.
ISIL has scribbled its noms de guerre on the church’s walls, and a large chandelier has been dumped in the yard.
In the church’s small side rooms, artificial flower garlands are draped near posters showing how to use a Kalashnikov rifle. Chaldeans make up the majority of Iraq’s Christians. But a community that numbered more than a million before the 2003 ousting of Saddam Hussein has since dwindled to fewer than 350,000 in the face of recurring violence.
In June 2014, ISIL seized control of Mosul and ordered the city’s Christian community to either convert to Islam, pay a special tax, leave or face death.
Weeks later, the extremists swept through Qaraqosh and the rest of the Nineveh Plain east of Mosul, where an esti- mated 120,000 Christians lived, prompting them all to flee. But the Um Al Mauna church is in a better condition than most of the rest of the Al Dawasa neighbourhood, which has been ravaged by the fighting.
On one of its empty trading streets, once flashy shop facades have been reduced to buckled iron and shredded concrete.
On one poster advertising male clothing, ISIL members – whose interpretation of Islam forbids human representation – have blacked out the faces and bare arms of the models.
Police ensured residents had beards, wore short robes and followed ISIL’s convictions