Iraqi forces comb west Mosul after Daesh counter-attacks
mosul — Iraqi forces launched a house-to-house search operation Monday in parts of west Mosul after a surprise attack by Daesh group militants recently expelled from the area.
Diehard Daesh fighters are putting up fierce resistance as an Iraqi offensive for Mosul’s Old City, where a few hundred militants are believed to be holed up, entered its second week.
On Sunday the militants launched a string of counter-attacks on the Tanak and Yarmuk neighbourhoods of west Mosul from which they had been routed, leaving several people dead, officials said.
A top commander in the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), which sent forces to fight the Daesh gunmen, said the attackers had infiltrated the area by blending in with returning displaced civilians.
“The group came with the displaced and settled in the Tanak district. They regrouped and launched counter-attacks,” Staff Lieutenant General Abdulwahab Al Saadi said.
“Yarmuk is being searched house to house,” he said, adding that two groups of Daesh attackers were still believed to be in the area, which lies on the western edge of the city.
A CTS medic said the attack had caused deaths but he could not say how many.
“There are martyrs who were killed by Daesh,” the medic said.
He said 15 to 20 militant fighters were also killed in the battle.
A local official said the attacks were carried out by “sleeper cells” as a diversionary tactic to ease the siege on the Old City, where commanders say militants only control about one square kilometre.
“Operations to flush out pockets controlled by Daesh are ongoing,” he said.
Iraqi forces, led by the CTS, launched a perilous assault on the Old City in central Mosul on June 18, eight months into an offensive to retake Mosul, the country’s biggest military operation in years.
The latest fighting has focused on the neighbourhood of Faruq on the northern edges of the Old City and part of the district, known as Faruq Al Ola has been taken by the Iraqi forces.
“CTS forces liberated Faruq alOla neighbourhood in the Old City,” said Lieutenant General Abdul Ami Rashid Yarallah of the Joint Operations Command coordinating the battle against Daesh.
“The Iraqi flag has been raised over buildings after large losses to the enemy,” he added.
AFP reporters who toured the area gave a harrowing account of the devastation in the narrow alleyways of the Old City.
Buildings have been levelled entirely with electrical cables dangling from them and debris from blown up cars found on the upper floors of those still standing.
Carcasses of motorcycles and scooters that had been rigged with explosives and blown up are scattered along the sides of the narrow streets — a legacy of Daesh suicide bombers who used them to slow the advance of the Iraqi forces.
And reporters spoke of the stench of decomposing bodies that permeated, including from the bloated remains of a militant half buried under the ruins of a building who died holding his weapon.
Hundreds of Daesh fighters have been killed since the operation started in October 17, and hundreds of civilians have also died.
More than 800,000 people have had to flee their homes and many are still housed in overcrowded camps. —