Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Islamic State forces cornered in Mosul
Iraqi troops are advancing through city streets and expect to declare victory by the end of the week. Civilian refugees fleeing the fighting say they “walked out of hell.”
MOSUL, Iraq — Iraqi forces edged through the final roads and alleyways of Islamic State territory in the city of Mosul on Tuesday as dazed and malnourished civilians were evacuated to safety.
The militants are cornered in a sliver of land in the western Old City, and commanders say they expect to declare victory against the Islamic State here by the end of the week.
Gen. Sami Al-Aridhi, a commander with the Counter Terrorism Service, said his troops were advancing on foot through the Old City’s winding maze of streets.
“It’s a battle inside alleyways against an enemy that commits to no ethics,” he said.
Elite Iraqi rapid-response units were calling in U.S.-led coalition airstrikes at close quarters Tuesday as Iraqi special forces moved door to door, evacuating civilians who had cowered in their homes through the final, terrifying assault.
Dozens of those families crossed the Tigris River in the beds of pickup trucks as temperatures soared to 122 degrees.
Disembarking to meet aid workers at an abandoned fairground, they looked exhausted. Some were holding back tears. Others crouched over their bags and cried.
“There was no food, no water; we had nothing. We were so scared,” said Hana’a Ashifa, a mother of four evacuated from the Old City early Monday. “When we finally heard the security forces, my mother looked at me, picked up our white flag and said: ‘It’s time to go.’ ”
More than 400,000 people have fled Mosul’s western districts since May 10, according to the United Nations. Tens of thousands more are still thought to be trapped.
Mosul was the largest city in the Islamic State’s shrinking caliphate, and its recapture by Iraqi forces is supported by a campaign of coalition airstrikes.
Commanders said Tuesday that fighting in the Old City is now taking place at such close quarters that Iraqi special forces have been able to lob grenades at the militants.
In July 2014, the Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr alBaghdadi, stood in the pulpit of Mosul’s medieval Great Mosque of al-Nuri, declaring a “caliphate” spanning parts of Syria and Iraq and calling sympathizers to join it.
On Thursday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider alAbadi declared an end to the group’s “state of falsehood,” after militants destroyed the mosque as Iraqi forces closed in.
Bustle has returned to much of the city’s east, with shops reopened across the relatively undamaged eastern quarters.
That sense of security remains fragile.
Local police said this week that while they had foiled several attacks by Islamic State sleeper cells in Mosul’s eastern quarters, the militants have also launched counterattacks in the more recently recaptured west.
“With the fighting intensifying, we know they will send more,” said Lt. Col. Mazin Abdullah, a spokesman.
Aid groups said this week that hundreds of civilians had been killed or wounded in the fight for the Old City.
“I saw so many bodies; I lost children, I lost my husband,” cried one woman, clutching her child tight as she shepherded older boys and girls to a patch of shade.
“We have walked out of hell.”