Iraqis resume Mosul mission
U.S. backs forces aiming to oust IS
— U.S.-backed Iraqi forces launched a major air-and-ground offensive Sunday to retake western Mosul from Islamic State militants and drive the extremist group from its last major urban bastion in Iraq.
Ground units pushed into a belt of villages outside the country’s second-largest city, and plumes of smoke rose into the sky early in the morning as U.S.-led coalition jets continued a dayslong drubbing of the extremists’ positions in and around Mosul and militarized Iraqi police fired artillery.
As the soldiers pushed on, U.S. special forces in fearsome MRAPs (a mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle) were giving fire support near the front line, while others consulted with Iraqi commanders on setting up defensive positions.
“This is zero hour and we are going to end this war, God willing,” said Mahmoud Mansour, a police officer, as he prepared to move out.
The United Nations warned that hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped inside their homes in Mosul “are at extreme risk,” with dwindling fuel, food and water and scarce electricity.
Iraq declared eastern Mosul “fully liberated” last month after three months of fierce fighting, but the extremists have continued to stage attacks there. The grueling fight there inflicted casualty rates as high as 50 percent for some units, reports said. Still, much of the
city’s infrastructure was preserved, and a sense of daily life has returned.
The battle for western Mosul promises to be even more daunting, as the half of the city west of the Tigris River has older, narrower streets and is still heavily populated.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the start of the latest operation on state TV. Using the Arabic acronym for IS, he said government forces were moving to “liberate the people of Mosul from Daesh oppression and terrorism forever.”
Police units quickly entered the village of Athba, about 3 miles southwest of Mosul’s international airport, encountering only light resistance. Separately, the Iraqi Army’s 9th Division moved into the village of Bakhira, also southwest of the city, the Ministry of Defense said.
By the end of the day, the Joint Operations Command announced that Iraqi forces had seized a number of villages, and would soon head for Mosul’s airport. It would be the prelude to entering western Mosul.
The U.S.-led coalition has been providing close air support throughout the 4-monthold Mosul offensive and carried out nine airstrikes against IS near Mosul on Saturday, Central Command said. The U.S.-led coalition said Saturday that warplanes had destroyed a building in a sprawling medical complex that was suspected to be repurposed as an IS command hub. The extremist group later disputed the claim, saying the coalition airstrike killed 18 civilians, including women and children, and wounded 47 others.
U.S. special operations forces are embedded with some Iraqi units, and thousands of American soldiers are in Iraq to provide logistical and other support.
“We are very close to it, if not already engaged in that fight,” U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters in Abu Dhabi. He declined to go into further detail, saying he owed “confidentiality” to the troops.
Citing witnesses in western Mosul, the U.N. said nearly half of all food shops were closed and bakeries had shut down for lack of fuel and an inability to purchase costly flour.
Humanitarian agencies were gearing up to aid 250,000 to 400,000 civilians who may flee because of the fighting. The U.N. estimates 750,000 civilians may be left in western Mosul.
Mosul fell to IS in the summer of 2014, along with large swaths of northern and western Iraq.