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| Iraq | |
| ISIL Should Know Better | |
| 2016-08-07 | |
| [StrategyPage] Driving ISIS (Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... in Iraq and the Levant) out of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... is now a matter of when, not if. More ISIS personnel and their families are leaving the city (with or without permission). The coalition air raids are becoming more frequent and increasingly effective. This is because more target information is coming from inside the city and nothing ISIS does seems to reverse this process. A growing number of ISIS personnel and operations in the city are being moved from captured government and military compounds to residential areas in an effort to avoid air attack. Worse these attacks are largely against specific targets, like ISIS leaders and key technical experts. Weapons and critical equipment (like communications and military vehicles) are also more vulnerable. This is not a new problem, a lot of ISIS artillery and armored vehicles were ordered to leave Mosul for Syria in June. But the coalition keeps finding essential ISIS vehicles and destroying them. ISIS leaders appear to be getting more key people (leaders, tech experts, most reliable fighters) out of the city and back to Syria. Thus when Iraqi troops move into the city there will probably be less than 5,000 ISIS fighters (plus lots of mines, booby traps and roadside kabooms) and few (but still over 100,000) civilians to deal with. The U.S. led air coalition over Iraq and Syria has been averaging about a hundred attacks (using either a guided missile or smart bomb) a day in June and July. About a third of that is in Syria but more will be switched to Iraq when the fighting is heavy inside Mosul.
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| Posted by:trailing wife |