Friday, March 29, 2024 | Ramadan 18, 1445 H
broken clouds
weather
OMAN
23°C / 23°C
EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Iraq forces poised for Mosul airport assault

936316
936316
minus
plus

STRATEGIC MOVE: Iraqi elite troops have retaken a key checkpoint on the main Baghdad highway -


Al Buseif: Iraqi forces readied on Wednesday for an assault on Mosul airport after blitzing extremist positions in a renewed offensive to retake the IS group’s emblematic stronghold.


Elite forces reinforced positions that were taken since a fresh push south of Mosul was launched on Sunday while hundreds of civilians fled newly recaptured villages.


“Around 480 people displaced from Al Yarmuk area are being transferred to liberated areas further south,” the federal police said.


Iraqi forces have retaken a key checkpoint on the main Baghdad highway south of Mosul and the village of Al Buseif, a natural citadel overlooking the airport and the south of the city.


There were no major operations near Mosul on Wednesday, with Iraq’s new interior minister visiting the village and the defence minister also expected on the front lines.


But Hashed al Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) paramilitary forces battled extremists further west near the town of Tal Afar, which is between Mosul and the Syrian border and still held by IS.


The Hashed al Shaabi said they blew up at least four car bombs in fighting near Ain al Tallawi and killed several IS members.


The elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) that retook east Mosul and did most of the fighting since the offensive on the city was launched on October 17 have not yet been brought into action in the latest push.


The interior ministry’s Rapid Response units could also move in on the airport in the coming days, a key target before troops breach the city limits to face the extremists in the narrow streets of Mosul’s west bank.


Senior US officials this week estimated there were only 2,000 IS fighters defending west Mosul, suggesting the group had suffered heavy losses in the first four months of the operation.


The US-led coalition, which has provided intensive air support as well as advisers on the ground, said before the Mosul offensive began that 5,000 to 7,000 extremists were in the city.


AFP reporters saw US forces moving into Al Buseif on Wednesday in convoys of large military vehicles.


The fate of an estimated 750,000 civilians trapped in west Mosul was a major source of concern as Iraqi forces prepared for what many have predicted could be one of the bloodiest battles yet in the war on IS.


Almost half of the remaining population are children, according to aid groups, and supplies are fast dwindling.


“Daesh fighters have seized all the hospitals and only they can get treated now,” an employee at Al Jamhuri hospital in west Mosul said by phone, using an Arabic acronym for IS.


The health of many residents had been deteriorating for months under the rule of the “caliphate” which IS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi proclaimed in a mosque near the same hospital nearly three years ago.


“Even before the hospitals were closed, locals had to pay Daesh sums of money they couldn’t afford,” the hospital employee said.


Medical workers and residents speaking from west Mosul on condition of anonymity said the weakest were beginning to die of malnutrition and shortages of medicines.


Iraqi forces declared the full liberation of the city’s eastern side a month ago but the situation there has remained precarious, with the departure of CTS to the western front leaving a security vacuum. Around half a million civilians stayed on in east Mosul. — AFP


SHARE ARTICLE
arrow up
home icon