U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday that the battle against the Islamic State militant group in Mosul would be challenging but he was confident it would move forward rapidly.
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“What remains is the biggest piece of the city of Mosul, which Daesh is trying to establish a Caliphate in, this is the next battle front”.
“As we take away more of their territory, it exposes ISIL as the failed cause that it is”, Obama said Monday, using another acronym for the extremist group.
Although many Iraqi Christian refugees head to neighboring states like Jordan or Lebanon, Ozan made his way to the United Kingdom in 2015 in order to take English classes for his masters program in which he received a state-funded scholarship. “This is going to be hard, this is going to be challenging”.
The Islamic State seized Iraq’s second-largest city in 2014 when Iraqi army troops fled en masse or were slaughtered, shocking USA and Iraqi officials who vowed to retake the city.
“They call it a slow-motion genocide for the Christians inside Iraq. They must be crushed on the ground, and our heroic fighters are doing that”.
For both leaders, moving quickly to retake Mosul is part of a strategy to sustain the momentum that Iraq and its partners have finally built up after years of struggled.
Jihadists seized the city in 2014 and it is now their last major stronghold in Iraq.
He said there are some priorities in the battle to liberate Mosul, including implementing well-prepared plans in order to reduce the casualties among the troops as well as the civilians and their property. In preparation, Iraq’s military has been amassing troops and retaking a string of towns in the vicinity of Mosul.
An Iraqi Christian deacon who fled his home in Mosul after it was overrun by the Islamic State has been denied asylum in England, which presents yet another example of how many Christians displaced by the barbaric terrorist organization are struggling to find safety in Western nations.
Washington considers the Iraqi government’s handling of the displacement as a major test of reconciliation in Iraq, given the blend of sectarian groups with an interest in the northern city’s future.
“A lot of our work today has been focused on making sure that that happens”, Obama said. Even as he and Abadi focused on recent progress in Iraq, the situation was growing grimmer in Syria, where President Bashar Assad’s military on Monday declared the end to a week-old cease-fire and a United Nations humanitarian aid convoy was hit by airstrikes.
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On Tuesday, Obama will give his farewell speech to the General Assembly, meet with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, and co-host a summit on the refugee crisis stemming largely from the Syria conflict.
