Iraq: ISIS counterattack fails in Mosul
MOSUL, Iraq — The Islamic State mounted a counterattack in the flashpoint city of Mosul on Friday, delaying the prospect of an imminent Iraqi victory, according to military officials.
Commanders said the militant group launched a wave of suicide attacks in the Old City around midday, threatening the government’s gains in an area that has become the Islamic State’s final redoubt in the city.
“They sent some suicide bombers today along with fighters, and our forces killed them all,” said Brig. Gen Shakir Rodh an of the army’s 16th Division, dismissing the pushback as “a normal thing in any battle.”
The development appeared to underscore the fragility of military victories against the Islamic State in Mosul, where forces exhausted by the grueling eight-month offensive find themselves vulnerable to counterattacks as they try to reestablish control.
The Islamic State’s capture of the northern Iraqi city in June 2014 capped the group’s efforts to seize control of large swaths of territory it would come to describe as its caliphate. Three years on, the loss of the city would represent anear-fatal blow to its territorial pretensions.
Iraqi units have cornered the militants in a sliver of land near the Tigris River. The offensive has been led by elite U.S.-trained special forces, but as the Islamic State mounts a final stand, territory to the north is being held by Iraq’s regular army and the police.
Iraqi commanders said that the battle for the last 100 square yards of Islamic State territory had slowed considerably because of the number of civilians still trapped in the area.
The United Nations has said some 20,000 remained in their homes.
“There are too many families there, andwe came to liberate, not to kill,” said Lt. Gen. Sami al-Aridhi, a special-forces commander. “The operation will be tweaked, and we will start again in the coming days.”
U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in Mosul have shattered neighborhoods and left hundreds of civilians dead, according to monitoring groups.
In a report released Friday, the Pentagon said 603 civilians have been killed since the air campaign in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State began in 2014, nearly half of them in or near Mosul.
Bombing raids from April 19 to May 23 killed 119 civilians, the report said.
The coalition defines a credible casualty assessment as one that “more likely than not” resulted in civilian deaths. Monitoring groups say the toll is far higher and have urged the coalition to investigate more of its strikes.
In four recently recaptured neighborhoods of western Mosul visited this week, many of the houses had been reduced to rubble and rebar, making it hard to tell where one ended and another began.
The bodies of Islamic State fighters lay where they had fallen.