Iraqi troops close in on Mosul mosque

MOSUL // Iraqi troops advanced closer to the strategic and symbolic prize of Al Nuri Mosque in Mosul yesterday as army helicopters fired rockets and small arms at ISIL positions in the Old City. Residents fled from the area, carrying belongings and picking their way through the wrecked buildings as shells and gunfire echoed behind them. Most of them were women and children.

The battle to recapture ISIL’s last stronghold in Iraq has now entered its sixth month.

Iraqi government forces, backed by United States advisers, artillery and air support, have cleared east Mosul and half of the western part of the city and are now focused on controlling the Old City.

Recent fighting has targeted the centuries-old Al Nuri Mosque . Its capture would be a blow for ISIL as its leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi declared a caliphate from the mosque in July 2014 after the militants had seized swaths of Iraq and Syria.

US officials estimate about 2,000 ISIL fighters remain inside Iraq’s second-largest city, resisting with mortar fire, snipers and suicide car bombings.

The black ISIL flag still flew from the mosque’s minaret yesterday. “We are advancing toward the Old City,” said police commander Gen Khalid Al Obedi.

“Their resistance is weakening. They are mostly using car bombs, and that shows they are losing on the ground.”

Federal police also arrested Husam Sheet Al Jabouri, the local chief of Diwan Al Hisba, an ISIL unit responsible for enforcing its rules, in Mosul’s Bab Al Sijin area, police said.

As many as 600,000 civilians may be caught inside the city with the militants. About 255,000 people have been displaced from Mosul and surrounding areas since October, said the United Nations.