Wednesday 24 / April / 2024
Qayyara/Baghdad: IS fighters on Wednesday kept up their fierce defence of the southern approaches to Mosul, which has held up Iraqi troops on the southern front and forced an elite army unit east of the city to put its more rapid advance on hold.
Ten days into what is expected to be the biggest ground offensive in Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003, army and federal police units aim to dislodge the militants from villages in the region of Shora, 30 km (20 miles) south of Mosul.
The frontlines in other areas have moved much closer to the edges of the city, the last major stronghold under control of the militants in Iraq, who have held it since 2014.
The elite army unit which moved in from the east has paused its advance as it approaches built-up areas, waiting for the other attacking forces to close the gap.
"As Iraqi forces move closer to Mosul, we see that Daesh (IS) resistance is getting stronger," said Major Chris Parker, a coalition spokesman at the Qayyara airbase south of Mosul that serves as a hub for the campaign.
The combat ahead is likely to get more deadly as 1.5 million residents remain in the city and worst-case UN forecasts see up to a million people being uprooted.
A Reuters correspondent on the southern front met villagers and police who said their relatives had been taken as human shields to cover the fighters' retreat from the area.
The militants have been using suicide car-bombs extensively to fight off the advancing troops, according to Major General Najm Al Jabouri, the commander of the Mosul operations.
He said his soldiers had destroyed at least 95 car bombs since the battle started on October 17.
Outside the village of Saf Al Tuth, Jabouri directed heavy machinegun fire at a sparse concrete building on a ridge where his men believed a sniper was hunkered down. Volleys of rockets flew over the ridge with a whoosh and pounded the village itself with loud booms.
UN aid agencies said the fighting has so far forced about 10,600 people to flee. Lise Grande, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, told Reuters on Tuesday that a mass exodus could happen, maybe within the next few days.
In the worst case scenario, Grande said it was also possible that IS fighters could resort to "rudimentary chemical weapons" to hold back the impending assault.
The fall of Mosul would mark IS's effective defeat in Iraq. The city, sometimes described as Iraq's second largest, is many times bigger than any other IS has ever captured.
US Defence Secretary Ash Carter said on Tuesday the attack on Raqqa, IS's main stronghold in Syria, would start while the battle of Mosul is still unfolding.
A senior US official said about 50,0000 Iraqi ground troops are taking part in the offensive, including a core force of 30,000 from the government's armed forces, 10,000 Kurdish fighters and the remaining 10,000 from police and local volunteers.
Iraqi army units are deployed to the south and east, while Kurdish fighters are attacking from the east and the north of the city where 5,000 to 6,000 militants are dug in, according to Iraqi military estimates.
Roughly 5,000 US troops are also in Iraq. More than 100 of them are embedded with Iraqi and Kurdish peshmerga forces advising commanders and helping coalition air power in hitting targets. They are not deployed on frontlines.
The attacking forces are set to increase soon if militias join Iraqi forces, although their presence is contentious because of concern that they could alienate residents of the area.
The militias, known collectively as Hashid Shaabi, or Popular Mobilisation Forces, said last week they would help the army take back Tal Afar, a mainly ethnic Turkmen city west of Mosul on the road linking Iraq to Syria.
Iraqi defence ministry spokesman Brigadier-General Yahya Rasool told Al Sumariya television channel on Wednesday that the PMF would open a new front in Mosul in the coming days. He gave no details.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday Turkey would take measures should the militias attack Tal Afar.
Turkey and Iraq's central government are at loggerheads over the presence - unauthorised by Baghdad - of Turkish troops at a camp in northern Iraq. Ankara fears that militias, which have been accused of abuses against civilians elsewhere, will be used in the Mosul offensive.
The Iraqi army said it had regained full control of the western town of Rutba on Wednesday, three days after IS attacked it, in an apparent effort to divert Iraqi government troops from the assault on Mosul.
The militants at one point controlled half of the town on a key route to Syria and Jordan in Anbar province, a hotbed for insurgency against the government.
