Towns near Mosul rise up against ISIL
Car bombs deployed against Iraqi troops
• The mutilated bodies of Islamic State fighters were still strewn on the ground of this northern Iraqi town on Wednesday. One was burned. Another’s face was flattened by abuse.
Iraqi troops on the march toward Mosul had moved into al-Hud a day earlier and declared it liberated. But they found residents had already risen up and killed many of the militants in the town themselves.
With the offensive to recapture Mosul in its third day, Iraqi forces advancing from the south and east are fighting to retake the towns and villages that dot the plains and line the Tigris River leading to the city. At times, they’ve met fierce resistance, with ISIL fighters sending explosives-packed vehicles careening toward the troops’ positions.
This area has been under control of the terrorists ever since the summer of 2014, when ISIL fighters captured Mosul and much of the north in a lightning advance.
In al-Hud, a Sunni Arab town on the Tigris, residents saw their chance to get rid of them. On Monday, a man paraded through town with an Iraqi flag in a show of defiance, residents told the Associated Press. ISIL fighters shot and killed him.
News spread among the hundreds of people living in the town, and soon a crowd turned on the militants.
At Qayyarah airbase, near al-Hud, a senior Iraqi general called on ISIL fighters in Mosul to surrender. Lt.-Gen. Talib Shaghati told reporters that up to 6,000 Islamic State militants are in the city.
East of Mosul, troops have moved about a kilometre from Hamdaniyah, to the east of Mosul, an Iraqi officer from the 9th Division said.
Over the past day, ISIL sent 12 car bombs against the troops, all of which were blown up before reaching their targets, he said, adding that Iraqi troops suffered a small number of casualties from the mortar rounds.