Large section of Mosul retaken

Iraqis in push for Hatra

MOSUL, Iraq, April 25, (Agencies): Iraqi forces retook full control of one the largest neighbourhoods of west Mosul Tuesday from the Islamic State group after a week of intense fighting, a top commander said.

“This morning, the heroes of the Counter-Terrorism Service on the western axis succeeded in fully clearing Tenek neighbourhood,” Staff Lieutenant General Abdulwahab al-Saadi told AFP in Mosul.

The elite forces have been spearheading a massive offensive launched in mid-October 2016 to retake Mosul, the country’s second city and the last major Iraqi bastion of the jihadists’ now crumbling “caliphate”.

The eastern side of the city, which is divided by the Tigris river, was recaptured in January, and a push on the west bank of Mosul launched the following month has made steady progress despite fierce resistance.

Tenek, on the western edge of the city, “is one of the largest neighbourhoods on the western side of Mosul,” said Saadi, one of the top CTS commanders in Iraq.

“It used to be one of the main strongholds for terrorist groups,” he said.

Saadi said the fighting in Tenek was fierce and lasted a full week.

“More than 20 car bombs were destroyed, dozens of terrorist militants were killed. Their bodies are still on the streets and inside houses,” he said.

Only a few hundred IS fighters are believed to remain in west Mosul, most of them hunkering down in the Old

City amidst several hundred thousand trapped civilians.

Iraqi forces have retaken neighbourhoods to the south, west and north of the Old City, tightening the noose around IS before a high-risk final assault.

The narrow streets of the Old City and its population density will force the Iraqi forces to conduct perilous dismounted operations which observers fear could yet allow holdout jihadists to stage a protracted last stand.

Iraqi forces meanwhile launched a fresh push southwest of Mosul to retake the Hatra area, which includes a UN-listed World Heritage site, a statement said.

The operation marks the latest phase of an offensive launched by the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) paramilitary forces in parallel to the main assault on Mosul begun six months ago.

The Hashed forces, dominated by Iran-backed militias, have focused their efforts on a front southwest of Mosul which aims at retaking the town of Tal Afar as well as desert areas stretching to the border with Syria.

“Hashed al-Shaabi forces launched Operation Mohammed Rasool Allah aimed at liberating Hatra and neighbouring areas,” the organisation said in a statement.

It said that five villages had already been retaken from the Islamic State group on Tuesday and that Hashed engineering units were clearing the road to Hatra of explosive devices.

Hatra, known as Al-Hadhr in Arabic, was established in the 3rd or 2nd century BC and became a religious and trading centre under the Parthian empire.

Its imposing fortifications helped it withstand sieges by the forces of two Roman emperors: Trajan in 166 AD and Septimus Severus in 198.

Hatra finally succumbed to Ardashir I, the founder of the Sassanid dynasty, a few decades later, but the city remained well-preserved over the centuries that followed.

Hatra left its mark on pop culture as the location for the opening of horror film “The Exorcist”, which was shot there in 1973.

The jihadists damaged parts of Hatra after taking over a third of Iraq in 2014, as part of a heritage destruction campaign that also saw them vandalise Mosul museum, blow up shrines and damage the ruins of the ancient city of Nimrud.

The jihadists see such destruction as a religiously mandated elimination of idols — but they also have no qualms about selling smaller artefacts to fund their operations.

The full extent of the harm to Hatra remains unclear, but the site risks further damage during the military operation to retake it.