Iraq special forces control 19 Mosul ‘neighborhoods’

Beaten and bruised, detained recounts IS torture

AL-QASR, Iraq, Dec 1, (Agencies): Iraqi special forces fighting Islamic State militants on the eastern side of Mosul have retaken 19 neighborhoods from the extremist group since the battle for the city began last month, a senior Iraqi commander said on Wednesday.

Brig Gen Haider Fadhil of the special forces told The Associated Press his men were now about four kilometers (2.5 miles) from the Tigris river, which slices the city in half. He said the 19 neighborhoods constituted less than 30 percent of the part of the city east of the Tigris.

The government last month launched a massive campaign to retake Mosul from IS. The offensive was launched on multiple fronts, but most of the fighting has to date been concentrated in the city’s eastern sector, with Iraq’s special forces taking the lead.

The presence inside the city of an estimated 1 million residents has slowed down the campaign’s progress, with the Iraqis and their allies in a US-led coalition avoiding the use of overwhelming power to protect civilians.

He said also that rain has vastly reduced the scale of fighting in Mosul on Wednesday.

Sweeping

Meanwhile, Iraqi army troops sweeping through an area southeast of Mosul on Wednesday came under attack from Islamic State militants firing automatic weapons and mortars.

The troops from the 9th Armored Division were on a foot patrol when they came under fire by IS militants stationed on the opposite bank of the Tigris River.

The troops were sweeping an area east of the Tigris before they pressed on with their advance on Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city captured by IS in June 2014.

The UN agency for women and children, UNICEF, meanwhile said in a statement Wednesday that nearly half of all the children in Mosul and their families have reportedly been cut off from access to clean water after a major water pipeline was destroyed in the fighting.

The pipeline, one of three major water conduits serving civilians in eastern Mosul, is located in parts of the city still held by IS, making it impossible to repair quickly, said the statement.

“Children and their families in Mosul are facing a horrific situation. Not only are they in danger of getting killed or injured in the crossfire, now potentially more than half a million people do not have safe water to drink,” the statement said, quoting UNICEF’s representative in

Iraq, Peter Hawkins.

Iraqi authorities are currently trucking water from some 35 kilometers (nearly 22 miles) away into eastern Mosul, but it is not enough to meet the needs of residents, it added.

“UNICEF urges all parties to the conflict to allow these critical deliveries and repairs. Civilian infrastructure must never be attacked,” said Hawkins. Coalition air strikes have hampered the Islamic State group’s ability to launch suicide attacks across the key Iraqi city of Mosul, a British general said Wednesday.

Suicide missions, particularly those conducted in explosive-laden vehicles, have been a vital weapon for IS fighters trying to fend off Iraqi forces pushing to recapture the jihadists’ last major IS stronghold in Iraq.

British Army Major General Rupert Jones, a deputy commander for the US-led coalition against IS in Iraq and Syria, said air strikes had focused on cutting routes used by the IS group to maneuver across the city.

So far, strikes have disabled four of the five bridges linking east and west Mosul, and peppered roads used by IS with craters, making them impassable.

“The intent of these operations is to reduce the effectiveness of the vehicle-borne improvised explosive

devices,” Jones told Pentagon reporters in a video call from Baghdad.

Meanwhile, Abdel Razzaq Jalal paused, visibly traumatised, as he told how Islamic State militants tortured him in a Mosul prison to force him to say he was a spy. “I never confessed. I knew the punishment would be death,” he said.

The ultra-hardline group arrested the 39-year-old in his village near Mosul in northern Iraq earlier this year, accusing him of spying for Kurdish forces.

After six nights and seven days of beatings, abuse and death threats, he says the militants let him go, after an Islamic State judge ruled there was not enough evidence to sentence him.

Jalal was lucky to escape with his life. Islamic State has executed scores of people it accused of spying in Mosul in recent weeks alone, as US-backed Iraqi forces push further into its city stronghold.

He knew it could have been worse. The fate of several fellow villagers from Fadiliya, a few miles northeast of Mosul, and of many others arrested elsewhere during Islamic State’s more than two-year rule, remains unknown.

While the physical scars faded Jalal showed months-old pictures on his phone of bruises and cuts all over his body - the ordeal remains etched in his memory.

“They hung me upside down from my feet and beat me for two hours. That was on the first night,” Jalal said. “They used cables, wooden sticks, and one of them - there were three or four - pistol-whipped me repeatedly on my head.”

The militants, all from Mosul’s surrounding areas, tried to make him confess to spying for Kurdish peshmerga forces who had been fighting against Islamic State, he said.

When he refused, they stepped up the abuse and threats.

“The second day, they lay me flat on my stomach with my hands tied behind my back. One man stood on my legs, another on my head, and they began raising my arms. I thought my chest was going to break.”

In a separate report, the US-led coalition bombing the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq said Thursday that 54 civilians had been “inadvertently killed” in seven air strikes between March and October.

A July 18 strike that killed 100 IS fighters also killed as many as 24 civilians, the statement added.

Close to 2,000 members of the Iraqi security forces were killed in November across the country, the United Nations said Thursday.

According to the UN mission in Iraq’s monthly tally, 1,959 Iraqi forces were killed last month and at least 450 others wounded.