Mosul gains despite heavy clashes

Civilian deaths feared in strike

NEAR MOSUL, Iraq, Dec 30, (Agencies): Iraqi forces faced car bombs and fierce resistance from Islamic State militants in southern Mosul on Friday, the second day of a renewed push to take back the city after fighting stalled for several weeks.

An officer in the federal police forces, which joined the battle on Thursday, said there were heavy clashes in the southeastern Palestine district, but they had made progress in two other neighbourhoods, disabling a number of car bombs.

Another officer, from an elite Interior Ministry unit fighting alongside federal police, said his forces were gaining ground in the Intisar district despite heavy clashes there.

Iraqi forces in the east and north of the city were clearing areas they had recaptured on Thursday before advancing any further, officers said, and the army was trying to cut supply lines to the town of Tel Keyf, north of Mosul.

Since the offensive began 10 weeks ago, US-backed forces have retaken a quarter of the jihadists’ last major stronghold in Iraq in the biggest ground operation there since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Recapturing Mosul would probably spell the end for Islamic State’s selfstyled caliphate, and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said the group would be driven out of Iraq by April.

Elite forces pushed into Mosul from the east in October but regular army troops tasked with advancing from the north and south made slower progress and the operation stagnated.

After regrouping this month, they renewed the offensive on Thursday, advancing from the south, east and north of the city, which has been under militant control for more than two years.

The second phase of the operation will see US troops deployed closer to the front line inside the city.

On Friday, a Reuters reporter saw a handful of Americans in their MRAP vehicles, that tower over Iraqi tanks, accompanying top commanders to meetings in a village just north of Mosul.

Although the militants are vastly outnumbered, they have embedded themselves among Mosul residents, hindering Iraqi forces who are trying to avoid civilian casualties. Despite food and water shortages, most civilians have stayed in their homes rather than fleeing as had been expected.

On the nothern front, Iraqi forces have yet to enter Mosul itself but on Friday they were clearing just-recaptured areas on its periphery as well as trying to cut off Tel Keyf.

“The enemy had occupied this area and used it for resting and resupplying towards Tel Keyf and Mosul,” Major

General Najm al-Jubbouri, a top commander in the offensive told Reuters in the northern district of Sada, which was recaptured on Thursday.

“It (Tel Keyf) is surrounded from the other sides and by our forces here,” he said.

Jubbouri said the US-led coalition backing Iraqi forces had killed 70 militants since late on Thursday and were using Apache helicopters, HIMARS rocket launchers and fighter jets.

Mosul is bisected by the Tigris river, and Iraqi forces have yet to enter the western side, where 2,000-year-old markets and narrow alleyways are likely to complicate any advance.

Coalition forces bombed the last remaining bridge connecting east and west Mosul late on Monday in a bid to block Islamic State’s access across the Tigris River.

A medical source in Mosul told Reuters a large number of wounded militants had been ferried across the river to the emergency hospital on the western side of city on Thursday.

The source said the militants were denying wounded and sick civilians access to the hospital.

More than 114,000 civilians have been displaced from Mosul so far, according to the United Nations - a fraction of the 1.5 million thought to still be inside.

Meanwhile, the US-led coalition against the Islamic State group may have killed civilians in an air strike on a hospital car park in northern Iraq on Thursday, officials said.

Coalition aircraft had targeted a “van carrying ISIL fighters” in the area, according to CENTCOM, the US military command for the Middle East, using an alternate acronym for the IS group.

The strike took place “in what was later determined to be a hospital compound parking lot resulting in possible civilian casualties,” a statement read.

IS fighters had been observed firing an anti-tank gun “before loading the weapon in the van and driving off,” CENTCOM added, promising the incident would be “fully investigated and the findings released in a timely and transparent manner.”

The coalition says it is taking extensive precautions to avoid killing civilians during its bombing of IS group targets.

It routinely uses precision-guided bombs or missiles to hit targets that are often observed by drones for hours before being hit.

But the coalition has already admitted to killing at least 173 civilians in its strikes in Iraq and Syria since the start of its campaign against the IS group, a number independent observers believe is greatly understated.

The London-based NGO Airwars estimates the coalition campaign has actually killed more than 2,000 civilians.