ISIS counterattack reverses Iraqis’ recent gains
Security forces’ setback raises stability concerns
MOSUL, Iraq — Despite clinging to only a sliver of territory in Mosul, Islamic State militants managed to launch a counterattack Friday that reversed days of Iraqi army territorial gains in just a matter of hours — a setback that underscores the fr agility of the Iraqi securityforces despite years of U.S .- led coalition training as well as the instability likely to follow the city’ s liberation.
The offensive began just after noon, when 50 to 100 ISIS fighters began firing on units of the Iraqi army’s 16th Division charged with holding the northwest frontline in the Mosul’s Old City neighborhood. The attack broke through the army’s first line of defense and the rest of its lines soon crumbled.
The surprise attack illustrated the resilience of the extremists who, though controlling less than a squarehalf-mileofterritory, have maintained the ability to conduct both conventional military counterattacks and insurgent strikes.
‘It was epic’
Hassan,a45-year-oldsoldier with the 16th Division, described the close-fought battle inside the rubblestrewn alleyways of the Old City.
“Daesh started to attack us from everywhere. We were so close to them that we even fought with hand grenades,” he said referring to ISIS by its Arabic acronym.
“We have lots of martyrs and wounded soldiers, but we can’t evacuate them. It was epic ,” Has san said, giving only his first name inline with military regulations.
The initial wave of Iraqi army casualties began arriving within an hour at a field hospital a few hundred yards from the front, carried on stretchers by medics on foot through the Old City’s perilous terrain.
The neighborhood’s narrow roads, once passable on motorcycles, are now covered with rubble and downed power-lines, and the footpaths that lead in and out of the Old City wind through houses, across rooftops, beside airstrike craters and down into basements.
At least five soldiers were killed and 25 wounded, said a doctor at the field hospital.
Threat of resurgence
Meanwhile, south of Mosul, ISIS has successfully retaken a pocket of territory declared liberated months ago.
“The attack started two days ago. Daesh took Imam Gharbi village,” said Salah Hassan Hamid, the mayor of Qaryara, a nearby town.
He said policemen and tribesmen allied with the Iraqi military were sent in, but clashes were still ongoing and only half the village had been brought back under government control.
Despite the setbacks, coalition spokesman U.S. Army Col. Ryan Dillon said the counterattacks were costing ISIS large numbers of fighters and not having an impact on the overall operation to defeat the militant group.
Once Mosul is liberated, Dillon said, Iraqi security forces “can completely focus on not just a conventional fight but also on security and holding that ground.”
However, Patrick Martin of the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group, said the ISIS offensives show the security forces allocated to Mosul are inadequate.
“Regardless of how you defeat ISIS (in Mosul), the city is going to face a threat of ISIS resurgence,” he said.