Forces enter Mosul airport, seize runway
BAGHDAD: Iraqi federal police pushed their way into the perimeter of Mosul International Airport yesterday, taking control of the runway amid fierce exchanges of fire with Islamic State militants hunkered down in several airport buildings, police officials said.
The advance came as part of a major assault that started five days earlier to drive the IS group from the western half of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.
Two police official said after police forces pushed onto the airport grounds and seized the runway, they came under heavy fire from inside the buildings at the site, including the main airport building.
The officials would not provide more details but said heavy exchanges were underway. They said troops from the US-led coalition were with the advancing forces, though they didn’t specify the nationalities of the foreign forces. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to reporters.
Private broadcaster Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen aired live footage from the Mosul airport perimeter, showing a military helicopter buzzing overheard and firing at IS positions as gunfire rattled.
Earlier yesterday, Iraqi special forces joined the government offensive for the western half of Mosul, pushing up to a sprawling, IS-held military base on the city’s southern edge that’s adjacent to the airport, officials said.
The elite counterterrorism forces moved toward the Ghazlani military base where fierce clashes erupted at the edge of the base, two special forces officers said.
On Sunday, after weeks of preparations, Iraqi forces officially launched the operation to take Mosul’s western half, with the Iraqi regular army and federal police forces taking part in the initial push. Since then, the military says they have retaken some 120 sq km south of the city. “The counterterrorism forces will be an additional force, which will expedite the liberation of Mosul’s western side,” Brig Gen Yahya Rasool, an Iraqi military spokesman, said.
The battle for western Mosul, the extremist group’s last major urban bastion in Iraq, is expected to be most daunting yet. Mosul fell to IS in the summer of 2014, along with large swathes of northern and western Iraq.