Iraqi troops reach key city bridge as IS militants reply with suicide bombings
IRAQI military units have pushed deeper into western Mosul, gaining control of a neighbourhood along the Tigris River and the foot of one of the city’s five bridges amid intense clashes with Islamic State militants.
Senior Iraqi police commander Maj GenThamir al-Hussaini, who commands the federal rapid response force, said the troops pushed deeper into the western Gawsaq neighbourhood earlier yesterday and reached the bridge known locally as the 4th Bridge.
All of Mosul’s bridges spanning the Tigris River and connecting the western part of the city, still held by the Islamic State group, with its eastern sector, were disabled by air strikes last year.
Maj Gen Al-Hussaini said IS militants were fighting back with snipers, anti-tank missiles and suicide car bombs, describing the clashes as “fierce”.
He added that Iraqi troops suffered casualties, but did not give a specific number.
Later yesterday from Gawsaq, Iraqi counterterrorism forces moved into the nearby Wadi Hajar neighbourhood, he said.
Private broadcaster Lebanon-based AlMayadeen aired live footage from Gawsaq, showing Iraqi troops in armoured vehicles and Humvees pushing through dusty streets as gunfire rattled. Thick black smoke was seen billowing from different areas following air strikes.
The advances come after Iraqi forces last week took Mosul’s international airport and a sprawling military base next to it before pushing into Mamun, the first neighbourhood in the western half of the city after the airport.
Though incremental and only the beginning of what is expected to be a long and protracted battle for the rest of Mosul, the latest developments reflect the Iraqi military’s determination to liberate the city, the second largest in Iraq.
Western Mosul is the last significant urban area IS holds in Iraq.
Iraqi authorities declared the city’s eastern half “fully liberated” from the Sunni militant group in January.
This was three months after they launched the operation to take back Mosul. The city fell to IS in 2014, along with large swathes of northern and western Iraq.