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Mosul Offensive News
ISIS counterattack slows Iraqi forces' advance(Reuters) Islamic State fighters retreating in the face of a seven-week Iraqi military assault on their Mosul stronghold have hit back in the last two days, exploiting cloudy skies which hampered U.S.-led air support and highlighting the fragile army gains. In a series of counter-attacks since Friday night, the jihadist fighters struck elite Iraqi troops spearheading the offensive in eastern Mosul, and attacked security forces to the south and west of the city. On Sunday two militants tried to attack army barracks in the western province of Anbar. Police and army sources said the attackers were killed before they reached the base. Iraqi officials say they continue to gain ground against the militants who still hold about three-quarters of the country’s largest northern city. One military source said the militants had taken back some ground, but predicted their gains would be short-lived. “We withdraw to avoid civilian losses and then regain control. They can’t hold territory for long,” the source said. But the fierce resistance means the military’s campaign is likely to stretch well into next year as it seeks to recapture a city where the jihadists are dug in among civilians and using a network of tunnels to launch waves of attacks. This has prompted fears among residents and aid groups of a winter food, water and fuel supply crisis for the million residents still in Islamic State-held areas of the city, and calls to speed up operations. “Daesh (Islamic State) still controls our neighborhood, and the Iraqi forces have not taken a single step forward in three weeks. We’re in despair,” said a resident in the southeastern district of Intisar, where the army’s Ninth Armoured Division has struggled to make gains. “My family and I have been sleeping under the concrete stairs in our house for a month now, afraid of the random bombardment between the Iraqi forces and the Daesh elements,” he told Reuters by telephone. “PEOPLE TRAPPED” The capture of Mosul, the largest city under control of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, is seen as crucial towards dismantling the caliphate the militants declared over parts of the two countries in 2014. Some 100,000 Iraqi soldiers, Kurdish security forces and mainly Shi’ite paramilitary forces are participating in the assault that began on Oct. 17, with air and ground support from a U.S.-led international military coalition. A senior officer in the Counter Terrorism Services (CTS) said its troops battled on Sunday to clear Islamic State fighters from one eastern Mosul district, using heavy machine guns and rockets. “Since early morning our troops have been clearing out around 40 Islamic State militants,” said Lt. Gen Abdul Wahhab al-Saidi, as heavy gunfire rattled behind him. “It’s an ongoing operation and we have killed most of the militants.” “People are trapped in the neighborhood and some have been killed,” said one resident fleeing into an area controlled by Iraqi forces. “They threatened us to try to force us to leave with them, but we refused,” he said referring to militants. Hundreds of residents in another neighbourhood retaken from Islamic State queued for cooking gas canisters, some squabbling among themselves for a place in the line, others carting away their cylinders on their backs or in wheelbarrows and carts. Iraqi commanders say they have killed at least 1,000 Islamic State fighters. A government adviser estimated the jihadist group now had about 4,000 fighters in Mosul. The military has not given figures for its own casualties. The United Nations said last week nearly 2,000 members of the Iraqi security forces were killed across Iraq in November – a figure which Baghdad says was based on unverified reports. The elite CTS units and the armoured division have captured around half of the eastern side of Mosul, which is split down the centre by the Tigris river. A U.S.-led coalition has bombed four of the five bridges across the river, aiming to stem a flow of suicide car bombers coming from the west of the city to target the army in the east. TANKS STRUGGLE Officers say Islamic State has deployed more than 650 car bombs, but that the pace of attacks has fallen off. In the Intisar district, the tanks of the armoured division have struggled to adapt to close-quarter urban warfare, and commanders have summoned infantry reinforcement, an officer said. Commanders also hope to stretch Islamic State defences more thinly, by opening new fronts inside the city. The head of the police rapid response forces, stationed a few miles south of Mosul on the west bank of the Tigris, told Iraqi television his units were awaiting orders to advance north towards the city. First they must take control of the Islamic State-held village of Albu Saif, the last obstacle before reaching Mosul airport on the southern edge of the city. A military statement said the army had captured on Sunday three villages near the town of Shirqat, further south from Mosul and close to the sites of two attacks on Friday night by Islamic State fighters which killed 12 people. Iraqi militia captures 8 villages Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi security forces recaptured on Monday eight villages at the city of Mosul from Islamic State militants, according to a statement by the defense ministry’s media circulated by news websites. The forces also demolished four underground tunnels north of the city that were used for escape by the militants, according to the statement by the War Media Cell. The latest villages won from ISIS included Nawafla Oula, Nawafla Thania, Tahrir district, Orta Kharab and other villages in the northern line of operations. “An IED factory was also dismantled in Simaq village…mortar launching equipment and other leftovers were seized,” read the statement. Iraqi security officials have said recently that the forces became in control of more than 50 percent of the eastern section of Mosul. ISIS remains in control over most of the western section which neighbors the Syrian borders, but commanders at the government and popular forces say they had succeeded to encircle the group inside Nineveh and deprived it of its supply routes from Syria. Also in Mosul, Abdullatif al-Sinjari, a major at the interior ministry’s SWAT teams, stated that ISIS militants toured the neighborhoods of Baladiyat, al-Sadeq and al-Muthanna, east of Mosul, forcing families to leave homes to other areas under the group’s control, threatening to kill non-complying citizens. The officer clarified that the group aims to demolish the evacuated homes as means to facilitate its movement in face of Iraqi troops upon their entrance. On the western side of the city, al-Hashd al-Shaabi militia’s media service said its fighters managed Monday to rescue 200 families from ISIS captivity near Tal Afar. “Al-Hashd forces relocated those families to more secure spots. Asharq Al-Awsat sez weather is the culprit Baghdad – Iraqi Security Forces resumed its offensives on the left coast of Sharqat, after three-day halt due to bad weather. Security forces managed to liberate Kanous town and other villages, according to a source at Saladin police department. The source added that the forces are besieging the three al-Haigal villages. He also pointed out that one security forces fighter died and three others were injured, while the force discovered the bodies of four ISIS militants in Kanous town. ISIS militants began to retreat of towns of the left coast of Sherqat towards al-Hawijah, as he expects the towns to be liberated soon. according to the source. Four Iraqi soldiers were killed and seven others injured during an ISIS suicide attack on a military facility in southeast Haditha, a military Iraqi source stated. The attackers were dressed in Iraqi army fatigues and engaged with the troops after they entered the facility where they blew up themselves, leaving four soldiers dead and some army vehicles destroyed. According to Lt. Gen. Abdul Karim al-Zawbai, commander of 27th platoon in Iraqi Army’s 7th division, U.S. aircraft of the international coalition raided on an ISIS site killing nine militant and destroying their weaponry. A senior officer in the Counter Terrorism Services (CTS) said its troops battled on Sunday to clear ISIS militants from one eastern Mosul district, using heavy machine guns and rockets. “Since early morning our troops have been clearing out around 40 ISIS militants,” said Lt. Gen Abdul Wahhab al-Saidi. “It’s an ongoing operation and we have killed most of the militants,” he added. Iraqi artillery hits targets in western Mosul BAGHDAD: Western-backed Iraqi forces have begun shelling parts of west Mosul, residents said, in preparation for a new front against Daesh seven weeks into a difficult campaign to drive the militants from the city. Federal police forces, stationed a few miles south of Mosul, on the west bank of the Tigris River that divides the city, have long said they aim to advance toward the airport on the southwestern edge. Military commanders hope that by opening a second front within the city they can increase pressure on the few thousand terrorists who have deployed suicide bombers, snipers and militant cells against elite Iraqi troops in eastern districts. An audio statement from Daesh’s new spokesman on Monday urged the militants in Tal Afar to stand their ground. “Destroy their vehicles, raid them ... in their shelters so they can taste some of your misery and do not talk yourselves into fleeing,” Abi Al-Hassan Al-Muhajer said in an audio recording posted online. Speaking by telephone from western neighborhoods, residents reported what they said was the first artillery or mortar bombardment of the area. “About 10 mortar bombs fell on the neighborhood, coming from the south, as the Iraqi forces approached...during the past 24 hours,” a resident of the Mosul Al-Jadida district told Reuters late on Sunday. “It has sparked panic among civilians because this is the first time it has happened in our area.” He said the bombardment had led to a virtual curfew in the district, with people afraid to leave their homes. “One of the mortar bombs exploded 100 meters from our house, killing three youths and wounding others,” he said. In the adjacent neighborhood of Mansour, a resident said the bombardment was an ominous development. “We’re worried there will be a repeat of the scenario in the eastern districts which have seen humanitarian disasters,” he said. An Iraqi police source, speaking from the front line south west of Mosul, said police rockets or mortars were not yet within range of the edge of the city. But a military source said French artillery forces, who are supporting the police units, had been firing in the south. The US-led air coalition has also conducted some airstrikes. Another Mosul resident said on Monday there had been “constant” airstrikes against targets around the airport and in the Tel Roman district on the southwestern edge of the city. Militants were reported to be on the move. People said they saw 40 or 50 pickup trucks with rocket launchers on top leaving Wadi Agab, an industrial area on the western limits of the city targeted by strikes, and moving to residential areas nearer the expected new front line. A shopowner near the industrial area said he saw a long queue of pickups leaving the industrial area on Sunday. “This morning I saw more vehicles leaving. I counted at least 50 trucks,” he said. Meanwhile, the Czech Republic is deploying medical personnel to Iraq as part of international efforts to combat the Daesh group. The Czech Defense Ministry said a surgical field team of 17 left Prague early Monday. The team is heading to a US Navy base located some 70 km south of Mosul. Via al-Manar: 2 die in fighting in Sharqat Two senior Iraqi army officers have been killed in clashes with the so-called ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL) terrorist group south of the terrorist bastion of Mosul, the military command said Monday. The brigadier general and colonel were killed Sunday in the Sharqat area, 90 kilometres (55 miles) from Mosul where Iraqi forces are pressing an offensive to retake the city from the terrorists, the Joint Operations Command said. Iraqi forces recaptured the western part of Sharqat in September but ISIL still controls eastern Sharqat. Tens of thousands of Iraqi forces backed by a US-led coalition launched a massive operation to retake Mosul, the terrorists’ last major bastion in Iraq, on October 17. Posted by: badanov 2016-12-06 |
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