Mosul to fall ‘within days’ as ISIL flees former stronghold
Iraqi officer says few militants left in the city, while the group also loses ground in Syria
MOSUL // Iraq will declare victory over ISIL in Mosul during the “next few days”, a senior commander said yesterday, as the extremist militants were pushed back in neighbouring Syria as well.
“In the next few days, we will announce the final victory over Daesh,” said Staff Lt Gen Abdulghani Al Assadi of the elite counter-terrorism service.
Gen Al Assadi estimated that there were between 200 and 300 ISIL fighters left in the city, most of them foreigners. His remarks on victory in Mosul came as ISIL withdrew from a series of villages in Syria’s Aleppo province where president Bashar Al Assad’s forces are advancing.
“ISIL withdrew from 17 towns and villages and is now effectively outside Aleppo province after having a presence there for four years,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Regime forces had been advancing through a sliver of southeast Aleppo province around a key highway linking Hama province to the south-west and Raqqa province farther east.
A Syrian military source in rural Aleppo confirmed the militants’ withdrawal. “The military operation is ongoing and Daesh withdrew from the Aleppan countryside towards territory in Hama and Raqqa,” the source said. The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are also fighting to retake Raqqa, ISIL’s self- declared capital in the country. On Thursday, they cut off ISIL’s last escape route, trapping the extremists in Raqqa.
The SDF broke into the city on June 6 after spending months chipping away at ISIL-held territory around Raqqa.
Its fighters have since captured two eastern and two western districts of the city and are pushing towards its centre, where ISIL fighters are holding tens of thousands of civilians.
About 2,500 militants are fighting in the city, according to Maj Gen Rupert Jones, a British deputy commander in the US- led coalition against ISIL. The loss of Raqqa and Mosul would be a major blow to ISIL, which declared a cross-border caliphate encompassing areas of Iraq and Syria three years ago. But it would not mark the end of the threat posed by the group, which is likely to return to insur- gent-style attacks that were its hallmark in years past.
In Mosul, Iraqi forces on Thursday captured the Grand Al Nuri mosque, where ISIL chief Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi made his only known public appearance in 2014, calling on Muslims worldwide to obey him.
ISIL blew up the mosque and its famed leaning minaret last week as Iraqi forces closed in.
Iraqi prime minister Haider Al Abadi hailed the recapture of the mosque as a sign of ISIL’s impending defeat, while the US-led coalition also said that victory for Iraqi forces in Mosul was near.
“I can’t put a timeline on that for them, but I see it closer to days than a week or weeks,” said coalition spokesman Col Ryan Dillon.
He praised the Iraqi forces’s “grit and determination” and said coalition support would help to bring “an imminent liberation”.
The UN estimates that tens of thousands of civilians have been trapped in Mosul’s Old City by ISIL fighters who are using them as human shields. Several hundred managed to escape yesterday, climbing over mounds of rubble and through narrow alleys as gunshots and explosions rang out near by.
The UN said about 1,400 people fleeing the area had been registered at screening centres in the past two days.
“We don’t feel the end yet, to be honest. It’s still full on,” said Frederic Cussigh, head of the UN refugee agency’s Erbil office.
“Regardless of the outcome of the battle, the humanitarian situation will be critical for a lot longer than we anticipated,” Mr Cussigh said.
The high numbers of displaced civilians and the extensive destruction will mean more people will have to stay in camps for longer periods, requiring food, water and other aid, he said.
He expected the humanitarian fallout from the fight for Mosul to continue into next year.
The clashes have displaced more than 850,000 people since the operation to retake Mosul was launched in October last year, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
With the end of the battle for Mosul in sight, the UN rights office yesterday highlighted concerns about retribution against residents of the city suspected of having ties to ISIL.
“We are seeing an alarming rise in threats, specifically of forced evictions, against those suspected of being [ISIL] members or whose relatives are alleged to be involved” with ISIL, spokesman Rupert Colville said.