Suicide bombers raise tensions in last days of long battle for Mosul
● Iraqi soldiers are targeted by women hiding among groups of civilians
have escalated in the final days of the battle for Mosul, as suicide bombings carried out mostly by women hiding among civilians target Iraqi forces closing in on the last few hundred square yards of Is-controlled territory.
At a screening centre in the city yesterday, security forces detained boys as young as 14 they accused of belonging to IS and barred the elderly and sick from stopping to rest during the difficult journey out of the war-torn district – a trek on foot of more than half a mile over mounds of rubble in 115-degree heat.
Many civilians are believed to be still trapped in the Is-run enclave, with around 1,500 fleeing with every 100-yard advance by Iraqi forces. Those emerging from the Old City at this late stage in the fight were weak, injured, gaunt and pale. For months, the district has been bombarded by Iraqi artillery and cut off from food and water.
Doctors Without Borders said the fight for Mosul was taking a “devastating” toll on the Old City’s residents. Only a “fraction ... who require medical attention are receiving it and many are dying on the battlefield,” the humanitarian organisation warned.
One man with a broken leg was carried out by a relative, with surgical metal pins protruding through the white bandages. A small girl, her head wrapped in gauze, walked past the soldiers holding her mother’s hand. Another man approached on crutches, his right leg missing below the knee, the stump bandaged.
An elderly man, stripped down to his underwear, staggered towards the troops.
As two soldiers grabbed the man and sat him at the side of the road, special forces Lt Fadhel Hadad yelled: “I recognise him from the Daesh propaganda videos!”
Hadad began question-tensions ing him but the man made motions that he was unable to speak.
“Don’t pretend you are too tired to speak,” Hadad said, telling his men: “Give him water and he’ll speak.”
Iraqi soldiers increasingly accuse civilians still inside the Old City of being relatives of IS fighters. About 300 militants are estimated to be inside a sliver of territory.
Amar Tabal, a special forces soldier stationed deep inside the Old City, said: “We know they are all Daesh families but what do we do, kill them all?”
Women and children who aren’t found to be carrying weapons are allowed to pass.
Men and boys go through a far more stringent process. Their identity cards are checked and those with documents not issued in Mosul or whose names appear on a database are held for further questioning. Lt Gen Abdul-ghani al-asadi, a special forces commander, defended the screening procedures. He described the IS suicide bombings as “barbaric” and maintained that searching and questioning civilians is essential to protecting his forces and preventing IS fighters from escaping.
Gesturing to a group of young boys being held in custody, Hadad, the officer at the Old City checkpoint, said: “These are not children. They are cubs of the caliphate.”
Another soldier kicked a man into the back of a Humvee and began binding his hands with plastic zip-ties.
A group of women in black hijabs covered in dust said they had travelled for about an hour and had been checked at gunpoint three times.
“They suspect we are all Daesh families but we aren’t,” said Ruqaya Mahmoud, 24, who said she was originally from the Old City.
IS captured Mosul in a matter of days in the summer of 2014. Iraqi forces backed by a Us-led coalition launched a major operation to retake the city in October. In January the city’s east was declared liberated and the push on the Old City began in June.