ISIL forces thousands into Mosul as a shield

UN says extremists herd civilians from outlying regions into town, seeking out and murdering suspected opponents

BAGHDAD // ISIL has abducted tens of thousands of men, women and children from communities around Mosul and is holding them as a human shield inside the city.

The United Nations said the extremists were rooting out anyone they perceived as a potential opponent, focusing on anyone with military training or past links to security forces. At least 232 people were shot dead in and around Mosul in a single day, Wednesday, and another 24 were killed the day before.

Civilians in areas south of Mosul were being herded into Hamam Al Alil, a town under ISIL control where the population has almost trebled, to 60,000, since the displacement began. Militants separated former members of the security forces from women and children and took both groups onward to Mosul. They killed 190 former security forces in a military base on the southern edge of the city and murdered 42 civilians at another base for refusing to join the extremists.

As well as mass murders, ISIL has bombed civilian targets including markets and mosques and perpetrated a campaign of massacres, enslavement and rape. As Iraqi forces have closed in on Mosul from the north, east and south, growing numbers of civilians have fled ISIL- held areas. The International Organisation for Migration said that by Thursday, 15,804 people had been displaced since the operation began on October 17.

“This is worrying because they haven’t yet entered the city,” said Karl Schembri of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

The US military, which is providing air and ground support for the operation, said it tried to disrupt the forced displacement of civilians south of Mosul by hitting vehicles being used by ISIL in the push. Brig Gen Matthew Isler of the US air force said the US-led coalition conducted “precision strikes” on unoccupied vehicles and far enough away from civilians to avoid harming them.

More than 100 American soldiers are embedded with Iraqi units and hundreds more are based in staging areas.

Brig Gen Isler said Iraqi forces had retaken 40 villages from ISIL near Mosul since the operation began, but most of the fighting has taken place in sparsely- populated farming communities outside the city. The coalition is carrying out three times as many air strikes against the extremists as it did in previous campaigns against ISIL in other Iraqi cities.

Iraqi forces are within five kilometres of Mosul on the eastern front, but progress has been slower in the south, where they are 35km from the city.

Iraqi forces are halting their advance to consolidate gains before moving forward.

“They are pausing, repositioning, refitting and doing some back clearing,” said coalition spokesman Col John Dorrian. “We think it will just be a couple of days and then we are back on the march toward Mosul.”

ISIL is also suffering heavy losses. “Just over the past week and a half, we estimate, they’ve probably killed about 800 to 900 ISIL fighters,” said Gen Joseph Vogel, head of US military operations in the Middle East.

Washington estimated there were between 3,500 and 5,000 ISIL fighters in Mosul and up to 2,000 more in the wider area.

ISIL still controls a corridor of territory west of Mosul linking it with the Syrian part of the “caliphate” it declared in 2014. But the pressure is on there too with the prospect of an offensive on Raqqa, ISIL’s stronghold in Syria.