Final stages of Mosul battle expected to be very violent
Hardest days ahead, says U.S. officer advising Iraqis.
The last handful of neighborhoods held by the Islamic State in Mosul will likely be the most difficult to retake despite nearly eight months of street-by-street fighting, the U.S. officer in charge of advising Iraqi forces in the area predicted.
It’s going to be “extremely violent,” Col. Patrick Work, commanding officer of the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, said during a phone interview Saturday. Work is in charge of about 1,800 soldiers who are helping “advise and assist” the Iraqi forces around Mosul.
“The hardest days are still in front of them,” he said.
Mosul is a critical prize in the fight against the Islamic State. It was once the main urban stronghold for the militants in Iraq and the logistic base for other atrocities across northern Iraq, including purges against the Yazidi minority and the destruction of world-famous, pre-Islamic antiquities.
Work declined to give a timeline for the remainder of the operation in the western part of the city, but some Iraqi officers have said the battle could be over by the end of the week in conjunction with the start of Ramadan, a holy month of fasting, introspection and prayer.
Yet with some of the most difficult areas of the city still held by militants - and tens of thousands of civilians still trapped in their homes - the fighting could likely last well into the weeks ahead.
“It all depends on the circumstances of the battle. Now they are entirely besieged and there is no way out, it’s going to be either fighting or giving up and trying to infiltrate with the civilians,” said Lt. Gen. Sami al-Aridhi, a commander of two of the U.S.-trained Counter Terrorism Service task forces. “I can’t give timelines but I don’t expect it’s going to be long.”
Iraqi forces are now wrapping up the final stages of an operation, launched earlier this month, that saw them retake nearly the entirety of the northwestern part of the city.
An earlier offensive that started in February stalled after coming up against heavy resistance in the southern part of the city.
The Iraqi military is usually mum about its casualty numbers, but Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday that the Iraqis had suffered heavy losses during the course of the Mosul Operation, with about 980 killed and more than 6,000 wounded.
The Islamic State holds only about five square miles of Mosul, including the al-Zanjili neighborhood and the Old City. The Old City is the site of the Great Mosque, the site where the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared a “caliphate” in 2014 across parts of Iraq and Syria.
Both Zanjili and the Old City are far more cramped that the rest of Mosul, with narrow side streets and alleys that will restrict Iraqi vehicle movement and give Islamic State fighters a clear advantage when it comes to launching their signature bombladen suicide vehicles.
The close quarters will probably force Iraqi troops to rely more heavily on their own resources rather than U.S.-led airstrikes and artillery. Aside from airstrikes, U.S. and other coalition forces are providing a range of other assistance to Iraqi forces, including flying small hand-launched drones to help spot targets for advancing forces, as well as providing counterartillery radar and drone-jamming equipment to stop the Islamic State’s own unmanned aircraft.
It is unclear how many fighters are left in the city or what type of resources they still have at their disposal. Work declined to give an estimate.