Iraqi troops take back Mosul airport from IS
The successful assault was an encouraging sign for the campaign to clear jihadists from the country.
Iraqi forces seized most of Mosul’s airport Thursday, an important milestone in the broader offensive to retake the western half of the country’s second-largest city from the Islamic State group, Iraqi and allied officials said.
The push to take the airport, which has been led by Iraqi Federal Police, is a promising start to what is expected to be a difficult and bloody fight to completely evict the Islamic State from the city.
“They are most of the way through the airfield,” Brig. Gen. Matt Isler, a senior U.S. Air Force officer in the U.S.led headquarters in Baghdad, said late Thursday afternoon.
It took Iraqi forces 100 days to seize the eastern half of the city, an operation that led to significant Iraqi casualties. Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of the U.S. Central Command who arrived in Baghdad on Thursday, said that 500 Iraqi military per- sonnel had been killed and
about 3,000 wounded in that operation.
After taking the eastern portion of the city, Iraqi forces paused for three weeks to strategize about how best to reclaim the western half without enduring such punishing attrition.
They decided to resume their offensive by taking the rest of the city on multiple axes so that the Islamic State would find it difficult to coor- dinate its defenses.
“They are ahead of sched- ule of where we thought they would be,” said Brig. Gen. Hugh McAslan, a New Zealand officer who is a senior commander here.
The renewed Iraqi offensive was prece d ed by a week of powerful U.S.-led airstrikes, during which 158 bombs were dropped on 33 targets, including the headquarters from which commanders of the Islamic State were believed to be operating. Among the other targets were places where the militants assembled car bombs.
The Islamic State first conquered the city in 2014, but has consistently lost ground in recent months to Iraqi forces.
The battle for the old part of western Mosul, with its many narrow and winding streets, is expected to be difficult. Armored vehicles cannot maneuver in such close quarters. Much of the fighting will be done by Iraqi troops fighting house to house.