Iraqi forces ‘2km’ from Mosul’s city limits
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IRAQI forces backed by jets and helicopters battled their way toward southern Mosul yesterday and prepared to take on the Islamic State group’s stronghold in the city’s west bank.
The fresh push in the four-month-old operation to retake Mosul has sparked fears for 750,000 trapped civilians who risk being killed if they try to flee and starvation if they stay.
Federal police forces reached the Aqrab checkpoint on the highway from Baghdad, a spot that marks the southern entrance to Mosul and from which the city is clearly visible.
“Today we are standing in Aqrab. It is very important because it is considered to be Mosul’s southern gate,” said Lieutenant General Haider al-Mtoury, of the federal police.
He said his forces faced many Islamic State car bombs and suicide bombers as they advanced to within barely 2 kilometers of the city limits.
Iraqi forces also secured a strategic area known as the Al-Buseif hills near Mosul airport, which lies on the southern approach to the city.
Meanwhile, Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization) paramilitaries pushed north on their desert front further west and reached the road linking Mosul to Tal Afar, a town to the west which is still under Islamic State control.
That will further isolate what senior American officials said yesterday were the 2,000 Islamic State fighters still left inside Mosul.
The assault launched on Sunday marks a new phase in the broad operation that began on October 17 to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second city and the jihadists’ last major stronghold in the country.
Its recapture would deal a death blow to the “caliphate” IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed in the city in June 2014 but has been shrinking steadily for two years as anti-Islamic State forces advanced. But it took Iraq’s most seasoned forces, the elite Counter-Terrorism Service, two months to retake east Mosul, where Islamic State put up stiffer than expected resistance.
Commanders and military experts believe the city’s west bank of the Tigris river could prove even harder to retake, with the Old City’s narrow streets necessitating perilous dismounted raids.
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