Mosul battle ‘will be over in a few days’ after ISIL is repelled
Iraqi general at front line of battle says ISIL has lost its fighting spirit after failed attempt to retake areas outside Old City
MOSUL // The battle to take full control of Mosul will be over in a few days, an Iraqi general said yesterday after a failed attempt by ISIL to return.
“Only a small part remains in the city, specifically the Old City,” said Lt Gen Abdul Ghani Al Assadi, commander of the counterterrorism units in Mosul.
“From a military perspective, Daesh is finished. It lost its fighting spirit and its balance. We are calling on them to surrender or die.”
The area now under ISIL control in Mosul, once the militant group’s de facto capital in Iraq, was less than 2 square kilometres, the Iraqi military said.
ISIL’s thwarted bid to return to neighbourhoods outside the Old City took place on Sunday.
Gen Al Assadi said the city would fall “in very few days, God willing”. The counterterrorism forces are leading the fight in the densely populated maze of narrow alleys of the historic Old City, by the western bank of the Tigris river.
A US-led coalition is providing air and ground support in the eight-month offensive.
ISIL last week destroyed the historic Grand Al Nuri Mosque and its leaning minaret, from which its leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi declared a caliphate spanning parts of Iraq and Syria three years ago. The mosque’s grounds are still under the militants’ control.
Iraqi troops captured the neighbourhood of Al Faruq, facing the mosque, in the north-western side of the Old City, the military said yesterday.
Iraqi forces took the eastern side of Mosul from ISIL in Janu- ary after 100 days of fighting and started attacking the western side in February.
Up to 350 militants are estimated by the Iraqi military to be besieged in the Old City, dug in among civilians in crumbling houses and making extensive use of booby traps, suicide bombers and sniper fire to slow down the troops’ advance.
Gen Al Assadi said Iraqi forces had linked up along Al Faruq, a main street dividing the Old City, and would start pushing east, towards the river.
“It will be the final episode,” he said.
More than 50,000 civilians, about half of the Old City’s population, remain trapped behind ISIL lines with little food, water or medicine.
Aid organisations say ISIL has stopped many from leaving, using them as human shields.
Hundreds of civilians fleeing the Old City have been killed in the past three weeks.
ISIL has carried out sporadic suicide bombings in parts of Mosul using sleeper cells.
‘ Daesh is finished. We are calling on them to surrender or die Lt Gen Abdul Ghani Al Assadi commander of Iraq’s counterterrorism units in Mosul
It launched a wave of attacks late on Sunday, trying to take control of a district west of the Old City, Hay Al Tanak, and the nearby neighbourhood of Yarmuk.
Gen Al Assadi said the attempt to take over the neighbourhoods had failed and the militants were now besieged in one or two pockets of Hay Al Tanak.
A curfew was in force over western Mosul.
The fall of Mosul would mark the end of the Iraqi half of the “caliphate”, but ISIL militants still hold large areas of Iraq and Syria.
Al Baghdadi has left the fighting in Mosul to local commanders and is believed to be hiding in the Iraqi-Syrian border area.
There has been no confirmation of Russian reports over the past few days that the ISIL chief has been killed.
In Syria, the insurgents’ self-declared capital of Raqqa is nearly encircled by a US-backed, Kurdish-led coalition.