Baghdad: Iraqi forces have recaptured nearly 90 per cent of west Mosul from the IS group and fighters in the city are on the “brink of total defeat,” military spokesmen said on Tuesday.
Iraqi forces launched the massive operation to retake Mosul from IS nearly seven months ago, fighting their way to the city, retaking its eastern side and then attacking the west.
Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, spokesman for Iraq’s Joint Operations Command, told a news conference in Baghdad that IS now controls just over 10 per cent of west Mosul.
Colonel John Dorrian, the spokesman for the US-led international coalition against IS, said that the end was near for fighter in the city.
“The enemy is completely surrounded,” Dorrian told the news conference. “The enemy is on the brink of total defeat in Mosul.”
The drive to retake Mosul has been supported by a campaign of coalition air strikes in and around the city.
“More than 300 vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (car bombs) have been destroyed by coalition strikes in Mosul,” Dorrian said.
“Our strikes have also destroyed more than 200 Daesh tunnels and more than 1,000 of their fighting positions,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for IS.
The fighter group now controls just a handful of neighbourhoods around the Old City, one of the country’s heritage jewels.
The area’s narrow streets and closely spaced buildings make it difficult for federal forces to take on the militants, requiring them to fight on foot instead of from vehicles as they have previously done.
Half a million people are currently displaced as a result of the battle for Mosul, and some 250,000 civilians are estimated to still be trapped inside the city’s west. — AFP
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