Iraqis and Kurds on the attack in battle for Mosul
●Forces backed by Us-led airstrikes ●IS retaliates with suicide bombings
Columns of Iraqi and Kurdish forces backed by Us-led air strikes have advanced on Mosul from several directions, launching a long-awaited operation to retake Iraq’s second largest city from Islamic State.
As airstrikes sent plumes of smoke into the air and heavy artillery rounds rumbled, troops pushed into abandoned farming villages on the flat plains outside the city.
But they were slowed by roadside bombs and suicide car and truck bombs hurled at them by the militants. The unprecedented operation is expected to take weeks or even months but, if successful, the liberation of Mosul would be the biggest blow yet to IS.
Though some of the forces were last night less than 20 miles from the city’s edges, it was not clear how long it will take to reach the city itself. Once there, they have to fight their way into an urban environment where more than one million people still live.
Aid groups have warned of a mass exodus of civilians that could overwhelm refugee camps. Iraqi
prime minister Haider Abadi announced the start of the operations on state television, launching the country’s toughest battle since American troops withdrew from Iraq nearly five years ago.
“These forces that are liberating you today, they have one goal in Mosul, which is to get rid of Daesh and to secure your dignity,” Mr Abadi said, addressing the city’s residents and using the Arabic acronym for IS. “God willing, we shall win.”
Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, fell to IS in the summer of 2014 as the militants swept over much of the country’s north and central areas.
Weeks later the head of the extremist group, Abu Bakr al-baghdadi, announced the formation of a self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque.
Mr Abadi pledged the fight for the city would lead to the liberation of all Iraqi territory from the militants this year.
In Washington, US defence secretary Ash Carter called the launch of the Mosul operation “a decisive moment in the campaign” to defeat IS.
The US is providing airstrikes, training and logistical support, but insists Iraqis are leading the charge.
More than 25,000 troops will be involved in the operation, launching assaults from five directions, according to Iraqi Brigadier General Haider Fadhil.
The troops include elite special forces who are expected to lead the charge into the city, as well as Kurdish forces, Sunni tribal fighters, federal police and state-sanctioned Shiite militias.
The Kurdish forces, known as peshmerga, advanced in long columns of armoured vehicles followed by hundreds of pick-up trucks on a cluster of some half a dozen villages east of the city yesterday.
Airstrikes and heavy artillery pounded the squat, dusty buildings.
The area – historically home to religious minorities brutally oppressed by IS – was almost completely empty of civilians, allowing air power to do much of the heavy lifting.
But Lieutenant Colonel Mohammad Darwish said the main roads and fields were littered with home-made bombs and that suicide car bomb attacks slowed progress.
Fighters entered the villages in Humvees but did not get out of their vehicles because it was too dangerous, a Peshmerga major said.
The Is-run new agency, Aamaq, said the group carried out eight suicide attacks against Kurdish forces and destroyed two Humvees belonging to the Kurdish forces and Shiite militias east of the city. The Kurdish Rudaw TV broadcast images of Kurdish tanks firing on two trucks it said were IS suicide attackers. One of the trucks crashed into a tank and exploded.
There was no immediate word on casualties from that attack or other fighting yesterday.
Just outside Baghdad – more than 225 miles south-east of Mosul – a suicide car bomber hit a checkpoint of security forces in the town of Youssifiyah, killing at least 12 people and wounding more than 30, officials said.
Iraqi army Lieutenant General Talib Shaghati said the Mosul operation “is going very well”.he said intelligence reports indicated that IS militants were fleeing towards Syria with their families.
IS once controlled nearly a third of Iraq and neighbouring Syria. But over the past months its territory has been dramatically reduced.
In Iraq, its control is now limited to the area around Mosul and a few other small pockets.
For the Iraqi military, the battle is a test after two years of trying to rebuild from the humiliating defeat it suffered in the face of the IS blitz in 2014.
Mosul is a mostly Sunni city that was long a centre of bitterness against the Shiite-led government, fuelling insurgent and militant movements ever since the Us-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
While two years of IS rule may have left residents hating the militants, there is also little love for the government.
“These forces that are liberating you today, they have one goal in Mosul. . . God willing, we shall win” HAIDER ABADI
So the long-awaited attack on the Iraqi city of Mosul has begun. The Iraqi pro-government forces are forcing their way in the Islamic State-held territory, but no-one knows how the battle will run.
Mosul is the last big prize that IS hold, it is the city from which they announced the creation of their caliphate in 2014. It means a lot to them and they might decide that this is a last stand. That will mean a long and arduous battle, close-quarter urban warfare is notoriously bloody and slow, and the civilians will suffer.
Of course the UN has to make plans for this contingency and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has issued an appeal for an additional $61m (£50m) to provide tents, camps, and winter items such as blankets for displaced people inside Iraq and the two neighbouring countries. There are fear that residents could be used as human shields by IS and that as many as a million people could be forced to flee their homes. It has the makings of another humanitarian tragedy and surely the governments involved in the war against IS will ensure the UN have the money and supplies that they need.
But there may be another tactic that is attractive to IS. There is probably now within the organisation a realisation that the caliphate will not remain. This time. For the better pursuit of their long-term goals might IS decide that it is better to flee in to the desert with as many of the reported 10,000 fighters they have. There they can re-group and rebuild. If they stand and fight what may be left?
But regardless of tactics and time there are two virtual certainties in this situation. The first is that Mosul will be re-taken by pro-government forces, it is only a matter of when and at what cost. The second is that IS will not be wiped out, but will turn purely in to a terrorist organisation, not a territory-holding army, and conduct a campaign of insurgency to the best of its abilities. The big question here is just how effective it can be and what resources it can command.
When IS first took over its towns and villages and cities there were reports of at least some broad support for them and there was a deep distrust of the government and its supporters. By many accounts that support has disappeared, and IS’S brutal regime has been uncovered for what it actually is. It is vital that the disaffection with Islamic State be maintained, all insurgent groups need the help and support of at least some of the indigenous population to be effective.
That is why it is vitally important that no sectarian violence occurs when towns are liberated from IS, and the undertakings given on this aspect must be delivered.
It is also equally important that there is a long-term plan to ensure the governance of these areas is as inclusive and equitable as possible.
It is in the interests of all the nations currently ranged against IS that these longer term plans are instigated and also that they ensure they continue. History tells us that the aftermath and the structures set up in the aftermath need to be robust to ensure that what remains of IS is not allowed to thrive.