As part of Obama’s push, more than 50 USA companies were pledging to spend, raise or contribute more than $650 million to support refugees’ resettlement, education and employment, the White House said. Iraqi officials expect the offensive to start in October, he said.
Advertisement
Iraq’s influential Shiite Muslim militias said they had also advanced separately on the town from the south.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has arrived in New York City on Monday.
Capturing Mosul, the last major city IS controls in Iraq, would constitute both a symbolic and strategic defeat to the militants.
President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi will strategize about the upcoming offensive to take back the northern city of Mosul when they meet on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
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.
Speaking to reporters at the end of a meeting with Abadi, Obama said he hoped for progress by the end of 2016 on Mosul but acknowledged a tough fight ahead.
A security source, meanwhile, said four villages had already been liberated in the Shirqat district.
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.
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.
“These operations pave the way for cleansing every inch of Iraqi land and God willing its end will be the liberation of Mosul city, . the liberation of all Iraqi lands and the end of Daesh”, Abadi said using the Arabic acronym for IS. 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. The militias have been accused of systematic abuses against Sunnis in previous battles against Islamic State including the June liberation of Fallujah, a majority-Sunni city.
Advertisement
The disposition of forces and the treatment of Shirqat’s residents, who have been living under Islamic State for more than two years, will be closely watched by the Sunni residents of Mosul, who have historic mistrust of the forces of successive Shi’ite-led governments in Baghdad. It was from Mosul’s Grand Mosque in 2014 that Islamic State leader AbuBakr al-Baghdadi declared a “caliphate” spanning regions of Iraq and Syria. Nevertheless, the terrorist group remains in firm control of several parts of the country, including Mosul.
