MAJOR ATTACK: Marks the culmination of a campaign to retake IS last major stronghold -
MOSUL: Iraqi forces launched an assault on Sunday to retake Mosul’s Old City, the last district still held by the IS group three years after the group seized the northern city.
Military commanders said the assault had begun at dawn after overnight air strikes by the US-led coalition backing Iraqi forces. They said the militants were putting up fierce resistance.
The push into Mosul’s Old City — a densely populated warren of narrow alleyways on the western side of Iraq’s second city — marks the culmination of a months-long campaign by Iraqi forces to retake IS’s last major urban stronghold in the country.
The loss of Mosul would mark the effective end of the Iraqi portion of the cross-border “caliphate” IS declared in the summer of 2014 after seizing large parts of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.
The military announced the start of the assault in a statement, saying the army, counter-terrorism forces and federal police had “launched an attack on the Old City”.
Machinegun fire crackled and plumes of smoke rose above the Old City as surrounding Iraqi positions were hit with heavy mortar fire.
On the first floor of a building on a street lined with destroyed car repair shops, a CTS commander holding a tablet computer feverishly called in coordinates for an air strike against a car bomb approaching his position.
Staff Lieutenant General Abdulghani al Assadi, a senior commander with the Counter-Terrorism Service, said the operation was advancing slowly “to preserve civilian lives as we breach the enemy’s defence lines”.
“Our forces have moved in on foot because the alleys are very narrow,” he said. “The strategy has changed compared to other operations. There is no room for our vehicles to manoeuvre and there are many civilians.”
The United Nations said last Friday that IS may be holding more than 100,000 civilians as human shields in the Old City.
Surrounded by Iraqi forces on three sides and blocked on the other by the Tigris River that runs through Mosul, the fighters had no choice but a fight to the finish, Assadi said.
“This is the last episode of the IS show,” he said. “It’s our most difficult operation. Fighting is fierce because it’s their last stronghold... They have nowhere to flee.”
He said he hoped the operation could be concluded before Eid — the festival marking the end of the holy month of Ramadhan — “but I think it is going to take longer”.
Iraqi forces launched the battle for Mosul in October, retaking the eastern part of the city in January and starting the operation for its western part the following month. The International Rescue Committee, a major aid group operating in Iraq, warned of the huge risks facing civilians.
“This will be a terrifying time for around 100,000 people still trapped in Mosul’s Old City and now at risk of getting caught up in the fierce fighting to come,” the IRC’s acting country director Nora Love said. — AFP
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