Iraq forces launch last push for Mosul
They enter Old City at dawn and advance slowly to ensure safety of 100,000 civilians kept by ISIL as human shields
MOSUL // Iraqi forces last night moved closer to retaking Mosul from ISIL after launching a lastpush assault on its Old City.
The attack began at dawn after overnight air strikes by the USled coalition backing the Iraqi forces, but the extremists were putting up a fierce fight.
The troops entered the densely populated warren of alleyways on the western side of Iraq’s second city, with machineguns crackling and smoke pluming from their enemies’ mortar fire. The operation was advancing slowly “to preserve civilian lives as we breach the enemy’s defence lines”, said Lt Gen Abdulghani Al Assadi, a senior commander with the counter-terrorism service. “Our forces have moved in on foot because the alleys are very narrow. The strategy has changed compared to other operations. There is no room for our vehicles to manoeuvre and there are many civilians.”
Surrounded by Iraqi forces on three sides and blocked on the other by the Tigris River, ISIL had no choice but a fight to the finish, Gen Al Assadi said.
“This is the last episode of the Daesh show,” he said. “It’s our most difficult operation.
“Fighting is fierce because it’s their last stronghold. They have nowhere to flee.” The International Rescue Committee, a major aid group operating in Iraq, warned of the huge risks for traumatised civilians, who have been kept in the city by ISIL to be used as human shields.
“This will be a terrifying time for around 100,000 people still trapped in Mosul’s Old City and now at risk of getting caught up in the fierce street fighting to come,” said Nora Love, the committee’s acting country director.
“Coalition and Iraqi forces must do everything in their power to keep civilians safe during these final stages of the battle.”
Gen Al Assadi said he hoped the operation could be finished before Eid – June 25 or 26 – “but I think it is going to take longer”.
It is not clear how many ISIL fighters remain in Mosul.
Many foreign fighters have joined the extremists in Mosul since the city was taken.
“The locals in Daesh will shave their beards and try to blend in with the civilians as they always do,” said Gen Al Assadi. “The foreigners will fight hard and eventually get killed.”
Yesterday, on the first floor of a building on a street lined with destroyed mechanics’ shops, a commander used a computer tablet to call in coordinates for an air strike against an approaching car laden with explosives.
Only metres from the forces’ front line and falling mortars, civilians cleaned their homes on streets lined with rubble.
Some appeared to have never left while others – carrying boxes of food and canvas bags full of clothes – were returning to areas the security forces had retaken from ISIL only a few days earlier. The loss of Mosul would mark the end of the Iraqi portion of the cross-border “caliphate” ISIL declared in the summer of 2014 after seizing large parts of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.
It was in Mosul that ISIL chief Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi made his sole public appearance, urging Muslims worldwide to move to the group’s “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria.
Iraqi forces launched the battle for Mosul last October, retaking the eastern part of the city in January and starting the operation for its western part in February.
Since the battle began, an estimated 862,000 people have been displaced from the city, although 195,000 have since returned, mainly to its liberated eastern part.
The militants have since lost most of the territory they once controlled in the face of US-backed offensives in Iraq and Syria, where an alliance of Kurdish and Arab forces are advancing on Raqqa, ISIL’s last bastion in Syria.
The fall of Mosul in 2014 was the Iraqi forces’ worst defeat in the war with ISIL.
Regaining the city would cap a major reversal of fortunes for the security forces who had fled despite outnumbering the militants who had attacked the city.