Dogged push by Iraqi forces through the mud and blood of Mosul
As the sun sets over Mosul, the soldiers of the Salahuddin Battalion of Iraqi Special Operations Forces believe they have just cleared the last Isil fighters from the eastern Arbajiyah neighbourhood.
Even with sporadic gunfire ongoing, civilian men bring glasses of tea from their homes to the black-clad soldiers in the streets, while young boys shyly gather around the armoured vehicles.
Their commander, Major Hazem Kareem, appears relaxed even though he thinks the nearest Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) position is just 100 yards away.
“We’re the tip of the spear pushing into Mosul here,” he says.
But right now his men are trying to extract a bulldozer stuck up to the top of its tracks in the mud of a reedy canal.
It’s been slow going driving Isil from Mosul. The Iraqi forces pushing deeper into Iraq’s second-largest city are finding Isil fighters increasingly well entrenched and ready to fight to the death. As the Iraqi forces advance, each district retaken comes at a cost in both military and civilian lives.
With Isil often preventing civilians from escaping and the Iraqi army telling them to remain in their homes, Mosul’s resident’s have no safe place to flee. Already, hundreds have been killed in the fighting and many more injured.
Yesterday, the victims of an Isil mortar attack were brought to the field station. Five screaming children received first aid before being transported to hospital in ambulances.
Other victims are silent by the time they are dragged from the Humvees and are placed directly into body bags.
The military operation is now in its second month. But the Isil fighters who have controlled Mosul since June 2014 have prepared their defences and Iraqi forces are yet to cross the Tigris into west Mosul, where fighting is expected to be the toughest.
Major Kareem explains why the initial swift progress is now painstaking. “We went on foot through here, clearing every street house by house,” he says.
Today, Iraqi army reinforcements will arrive to hold the position and Major Kareem’s men will launch a new advance. “We’re at the gates of the Aden neighbourhood,” he says. “We’ll attack there next.”
The mired bulldozer roars briefly to life in a belch of blue smoke and the greasy, overalled mechanic shouts out “Allahu akbar”.
Armoured bulldozers are crucial to the advance, working under fire to clear roads of booby traps and blockades. With two machines already disabled on the road into Arbajiyah, the Salahuddin Battalion need to extract the earthmover in order to finish building a dirt barricade to consolidate their front line.
These barricades are meant to stop Isil suicide truck bombers. “We had four suicide bombs today and three yesterday,” says Major Kareem. His soldiers say suicide attacks are their biggest threat, and it is not always possible to stop them in time.
Two miles to the rear of the front line, the bloody victims of these attacks are taken to a rudimentary field hospital, where they are treated on dusty gurneys alongside victims of gunshots, mortars and artillery fire. Each day the medics receive dozens of patients – both civilians and soldiers.
“They only use these suicide tactics,” said a frustrated Sergeant Ali Jafar, 23, when he was brought in on Sunday with a shrapnel wound to the arm. He’d have the shrapnel removed and then come back for reserve duty, he said.
Ahmed Hamid, a civilian, said he fled the Arbajiyah neighbourhood on Sunday after a suicide vehicle detonated nearby. “We only left because our home was destroyed by the blast,” said the 47-year-old, blood leaking through a bandage round his head. Standing with him near the aid station as he waited for transportation to a nearby displacement camp, his two sons bore facial injuries from the blast. So far, nearly 59,000 civilians have been displaced by fighting, though the UN initially warned that figure could rise to 200,000 in the first few weeks of the operation.
“It is hard for us when Daesh uses civilians as human shields,” Major Kareem says, using the Arabic name for Isil. “But then when we free an area civilians can feed us with intelligence.”
Despite the grinding resistance, Major Kareem insists his unit is holding its edge. “We are determined to free every metre of Mosul,” he says. “The spear is still so sharp.”