Iraqi forces fragile after ISIS attack
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 fragility of the Iraqi security forces 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 half-mile of territory, have maintained the ability to conduct both conventional military counterattacks and insurgent strikes.
Hassan, a 45-year-old soldier with the 16th Division, described the close-fought battle inside the rubble-strewn 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,” Hassan said, giving only his first name in line with military regulations.
The initial wave of Iraqi army casualties began arriving within an hour at a field hospital a few hundred meters 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. The Iraqi military was forced to pull back about 80 yards, behind a row of buildings along one of the Old City’s few main roads, said an Iraqi officer overseeing the Mosul operation who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
Similar ISIS counterattacks over the past month point to the difficult road ahead.
In late June, some 200 ISIS soldiers dressed in fatigues that resembled the Iraqi military’s Shiite militia allies launched an offensive on two neighborhoods along Mosul’s western edge. Iraqi army units crumbled and Iraq’s special forces had to be dispatched to the area along with coalition surveillance and air support. The reallocation of resources stalled the Old City push, then in its early days.
In mid-June, more than 100 ISIS fighters launched a large-scale counterattack from the southern front on Federal Police units stationed there, killing 11, seizing armored vehicles and weapons.