Iraqi notes troop losses ‘heavy’ in Mosul fighting
Despite ISIS counterattacks, forces gain turf
MOSUL, Iraq — Islamic State counterattacks in southeastern Mosul inflicted heavy losses on Iraqi forces over- night after a new push deeper into the city this week, according to an Iraqi army officer.
Despite the counterattacks, the fresh Iraqi push appears to have relieved pressure on Iraq’s special forces who largely have been leading the fight inside the city on the eastern front. Wednesday afternoon, the special forces announced new gains. The troops retook another neighborhood, moving them closer to the Tigris River, which divides Mosul’s east from west, according to the commander of a joint operations center that oversees the Mosul campaign.
Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Yarellah, said in a statement that troops had “fully liberated” the al-Elam neighborhood and raised the Iraqi flag over its buildings. Yarellah added that Islamic State militants “suffered losses” without elaborating.
Also Wednesday, the Islamic State’s Amaaq news agency released a propaganda video showing captive British photojournalist John Cantlie in what appeared to be central Mosul. Cantlie is seen detailing the U.S.-led coalition’s destruction of four of Mosul’s five main bridges in a series of airstrikes last month that he describes as inflicting harm on the city’s sizable civilian population.
The Islamic State has long used Cantlie for propaganda purposes, featuring him in videos from Mosul as well as the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Kobani, likely speaking under duress. As Mosul’s bridges were destroyed last
month, this is the first confirmation that Cantlie is alive since he appeared in an Islamic State video in July.
At a small field hospital near Mosul’s eastern front line, medics said that by midday Wednesday they had treated about a dozen Iraqi soldiers with gunshot and shrapnel wounds. As progress into militant-held Mosul has ground on slowly, a field hospital that was once no more than a few cots in an open lot has become more established. Military hospital cots sat in a driveway of a nearby abandoned building flanked by IV stands and oxygen tanks.
The medics spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to brief the media.
The Iraqi army said Tuesday that its troops retook the al-Salam hospital and pushed the front line back more than a mile, but Iraqi forces have quickly advanced into Mosul only to be pushed back by counterattacks at night.
“Daesh waited until night to attack the troops,” Iraqi army Sgt. Maj. Hakim Saranbii said. He added that the attacks “inflicted heavy losses,” without giving specific casualty figures or further details. Iraqi Defense Ministry officials in Baghdad did not immediately comment.
Convoys of dozens of armored Iraqi special forces and army Humvees could be seen moving into the southeastern neighborhood Wednesday morning.
“What we see here is the enemy reacting to a new axis of advance,” said coalition spokesman U.S. Army Col. John Dorrian, explaining that the new push is putting increased pressure on the Islamic State.
The Iraqi government has not publicized the casualty figures for its troops and paramilitary forces fighting in Mosul and elsewhere in northern Iraq.
Last week, the U.N. said in a report that nearly 2,000 Iraqi troops were killed last month, but after coming under fire from the media arm of the Iraqi military, it announced it would discontinue publishing casualty figures for Iraq’s security forces.
Backed by the U.S.-led international coalition, Iraqi government troops and paramilitary forces opened the campaign in October to dislodge Islamic State militants from Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and the last major Islamic State urban bastion in the country. Progress in Mosul has been slowed by heavily armored Islamic State car bombs, snipers and networks of tunnels that allow the fighters to move without being seen by U.S.-led coalition aircraft.
Elsewhere, bombing attacks hit commercial areas in and around the capital, Baghdad, on Wednesday, killing at least 17 civilians and wounding 57, police and health officials said.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group, which has staged dozens of similar attacks in the past.