Pace quickens as troops press drive in Mosul
MOSUL, Iraq — Iraqi forces have won a string of swift territorial gains in Mosul in the fight against the Islamic State group after months of slow progress. Government troops retook the eastern edge of a third bridge in Mosul on Saturday and a cluster of buildings inside Mosul university, according to a senior Iraqi officer overseeing the operation.
Islamic State fighters overran Mosul in the summer of 2014, announcing from there their self-styled “caliphate” after taking a large swath of Iraq and Syria in a lightning surge. Access to the city’s central bank, a large taxable civilian population and nearby oilfields quickly made Islamic State the world’s wealthiest terrorist group.
Yet even as a punishing campaign of U.S.-led coalition air strikes has pushed the militants underground, Islamic State leaders continued to use Mosul as a key logistical hub for planning meetings. If recaptured by the Iraqi forces, Islamic State territory in Iraq that once stretched across a third of the country would be reduced to small pockets in the north and west.
Iraqi forces now control the eastern sides of three of the city’s five bridges that span the Tigris river in Mosul. Warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition bombed the city’s bridges late last year in an effort to isolate militants by disrupting resupply routes.
At Mosul University, senior commanders said Iraqi forces have secured more than half of the campus Saturday amid stiff resistance.
Iraqi forces entered the university from the southeast Friday morning and by nightfall had secured a handful of buildings, Brig. Gen. Haider Fadhil and Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi said on a tour of the university Saturday.
Thick clouds of black smoke rose from the middle of the sprawling complex Saturday. By afternoon, clashes had intensified with volleys of sniper and mortar fire targeting the advancing Iraqi forces. Convoys of Iraqi Humvees snaked through the campus, pausing for artillery and air strikes to clear snipers perched within classrooms, dormitories and behind the trees that line the campus streets.
Medics operating a field hospital in eastern Mosul said civilian casualties have dropped significantly over the past three days as Iraqi forces moved into government complexes like the university rather than dense civilian neighborhoods.
The huge operation to retake Mosul from Islamic State began in October.