Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
AT FRONT LINE OF TERROR WAR Diary from Hell
Deafening bomb strikes, constant gunfire, grabbing lunch with Iraqi troops and rotting ISIS corpses in the wrecked streets… our week in Mosul
him to let us through. The heat was unbearable and at the Old City the Iraqi special forces were very tense as Prime Minister Haider al-abadi had arrived as the battle still raged nearby.
Troops had driven IS all the way to the Tigris and the jihadists were trying to escape. We were invited to lunch of chicken and rice and melons.
One middle-aged soldier giggled, his mouth full of chicken as he asked us: “You want to meet IS?” His mates told us he was referring to three rotting IS corpses he had killed days ago, lying in a shop over the road. We declined. After hours of waiting we
and injured more than 200. Ms Dick said a “very large number of plots” have been foiled in recent times.
She added: “I think it is well into the teens in the last couple of years, where we know people were intent on attacking and that has been stopped.
“In addition, hundreds of arrests of made it to the front line, where we witnessed RAF air-strikes landing a few hundred yards away, smashing Islamic State’s last stand. We left as communications were down in Mosul and we were worried about filing copy. Picked up at 11am and drove towards Mosul to interview an Iraqi who had been at the al-nuri mosque when IS leader Abu Bakr al-baghdadi proclaimed his caliphate in 2014.
Many of Yassin Samir Ahmed’s
people who are radicalised, and are spreading hatred or supporting terrorism, or want to carry out a terrorist attack.
“We’ve had a huge number of successful operations, together with the intelligence family and friends were slaughtered by IS. Security even tighter today. At the first Peshmerga checkpoint we waited an hour, sitting with an officer in his air-conditioned room, before being told we needed new paperwork.
We drove back to Erbil and took hours finding the Kurdish regional government office where the official agreed to call the checkpoint.
We drove back and were allowed through the barrier, driving through Iraqi checkpoints all the way to Mosul city, where an officious soldier refused to let us by. We interviewed Yassin over the phone and headed to Erbil.
agencies, and we work closely with them and colleagues overseas.” Ms Dick said police need people to tell them what is happening in their neighbourhood.
She added: “They are living in our communities and that is a problem for all of us.” Our last day so we spent our time calling Iraqi troops on the front line, aware we wouldn’t make it through the checkpoints.
One told us the astonishing story of Iraqi special forces hero Mohammed Qasim, the Lion of Mosul, who had killed six IS men by going undercover as one of them in the heat of battle. A general confirmed the story. Spent the day with Nechirvan tracking down pictures of him. Finally someone e-mailed them and we filed the story, while trying to reach Mosul a final time. We failed after a few checkpoints.
The team went for a pint in Erbil and we said goodbye to Nechirvan. One of his friends told us he had been shot at and pinned down by IS months before. He hadn’t said a word about his horrific experience.