Life in nerve centre where Mosul offensive is coordinated

Iraq and US soldiers team up at airbase in drive to oust ISIL

QAYYARAH, IRAQ // It is hard to believe that a mere 60 kilometres away, fighting is raging as Iraqi forces attempt to retake Mosul from ISIL.

But at Qayyarah Air Field West, where artillery strikes and air raids against ISIL are coordinated, soldiers from the US 101st Airborne Division have no combat role.

“We work out a lot,” says one soldier outside the mess tent.

But lack of combat action is no excuse for complacency and even miles from the front line, many wear full combat gear, including flak jackets, and carry ammunition and M4 carbines, while mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles include a turret gunner even for short journeys around the base. Iraqi and US soldiers who share the base have very different experiences.

In the US compound rules and regulations are paramount, while on the Iraqi side the at- mosphere is far more relaxed.

The two sit side by side in the joint command centre where a fireball on the computer screens draws the attention of all. American reaction is knowing, the Iraqis much less so.

“Was that artillery?” says an Iraqi officer. “That was an air raid,” comes the answer.

BAGHDAD // Iraq’s parliament speaker said an air raid targeting the ISIL-held town of Qaim near the Syrian border killed and wounded dozens of civilians and said the Iraqi government should be held responsible.

“The raid hit unarmed civilians in shopping centres in Qaim and caused the death and wounding of dozens of them,” speaker Salim Al Jabouri said. He described the incident as a crime and demanded a government inquiry to find and punish the perpetrators.

He did not provide an exact casualty figure, but hospital sources and local parliamentarians said that three air raids killed dozens of civilians – including 12 women and 19 children – on Wednesday in a market district of Qaim.

The government said fighter planes had targeted ISIL militants in two houses in Qaim but denied that civilians were present.

Col John Dorrian, a spokesman for the United States-led coalition battling ISIL, said on Twitter that it did not conduct any raids in the area at the time. Another Sunni politician, Mohammed Al Karboli, said the fighter planes targeted three markets in Qaim during rush hour, killing and wounding 80 people. He did not cite his source. The ISIL-linked Aamaq news agency released a video on Wednesday purporting to show the aftermath of the air raid.

‘ The raid hit unarmed civilians in shopping centres in Qaim and caused the death and wounding of dozens of them Salim Al Jabouri Iraqi parliament speaker

The footage shows several men rushing towards a scene where dozens of cars were on fire.

Bodies of children and adults, some burnt, can be seen on the ground. The authenticity of the video could not be verified. The Iraqi government said it was fabricated.

The defence ministry’s media office said that based on “accurate intelligence from our sources in the region” planes carried out hits on two homes where up to 65 ISIL fighters were gathered. Qaim, about 320 kilometres west of Baghdad, is one of a number of small towns in the western Anbar province still ruled by the extremists. On Wednesday, Iraqi troops who seized a hospital in Mosul believed to be used as an ISIL military base, retreated after a fierce counter- attack, giving up some of their biggest gains in a seven- week campaign to recapture the city. The soldiers seized Salam hospital on Tuesday but pulled back the next day after being hit by six suicide car bombs and “heavy enemy fire”, the US-led coalition supporting Iraqi forces said.

At Iraq’s request, coalition warplanes also struck a building in the hospital complex from which the militants were firing machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, it said.

Tuesday’s rapid advance into the Wahda neighbourhood where the hospital is located marked a change of tactics after a month of gruelling fighting in east Mosul, in which the army has sought to capture and clear neighbourhoods block by block.

The soldiers are part of a USbacked 100,000- strong coali- tion of Iraqi forces including the army, federal police, Kurdish peshmerga fighters and mainly Shiite Popular Mobilisation forces battling to crush ISIL in Mosul, its last major urban bastion in the country.

Defeating the militants in their stronghold would be a major step in rolling back the caliphate declared by the extremists in parts of Syria and Iraq when they took over Mosul in mid-2014.

But with two years to establish themselves in northern Iraq’s largest city, retreating fighters have waged a lethal defence, deploying hundreds of suicide car bombers, mortar barrages and snipers against the advancing soldiers and exploiting a network of tunnels to ambush them in residential areas.