Battle to regain Mosul is ‘almost complete’
MOSUL: Iraqi security forces were expected to fully control this key city yesterday as Islamic State’s defensive lines collapsed in its former de facto capital, state television reported.
Air strikes and artillery pounded the jihadists’ last bastion as black smoke billowed over the city.
Some Iraqi soldiers celebrated, dancing with rifles and machine guns and waving the national flag as they reached their assigned targets, without waiting for a formal victory announcement to be made, a Reuters TV crew said.
The mood was less festive among some of the nearly 1 million Mosul residents displaced by months of fighting, many of whom are living in camps near the city.
“If there is no rebuilding and people don’t return to their homes and regain their belongings, what is the meaning of liberation?” Mohammed Haji Ahmed, an elderly clothing trader, in the Hassan Sham camp, east of Mosul, said.
“We are seeing now the last metres and then final victory will be announced,” a television presenter said, citing the channel’s correspondents embedded with security forces battling in IS’S redoubt in Mosul. “It’s a matter of hours,” she said.
A military spokesman said the insurgents’ defence lines were collapsing. Iraqi commanders said the insurgents were fighting for every metre with snipers, grenades and suicide bombers, forcing security forces to fight house-to-house in the densely populated maze of alleyways.
A Us-led international coalition is providing air and ground support to the eight-month offensive to wrest back Mosul.
“The battle has reached the phase of chasing the insurgents in remaining blocks,” the Iraqi military media office said. “Some members of Daesh (IS) have surrendered,” it added, using an Arab acronym of IS.
Months of urban warfare has displaced 900 000 people, about half the city’s pre-war population, and killed thousands, according to aid organisations.
The UN predicts it will cost more than $1 billion (R13.4bn) to repair basic infrastructure in Mosul. – Reuters