Gen. Maan al-Saadi says the elite Counterterrorism Forces advanced on the town of Bartella with the aid of USA -led coalition airstrikes and heavy artillery on Thursday, the fourth day of a massive operation to retake Iraq’s second-largest city.
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It has led numerous offensives over this past summer, pushing Islamic State out of villages surrounding Mosul.
Iraqi-led forces have besieged a Christian town in an attempt to liberate it from ISIS control, but they are facing fierce resistance and exchanging heavy gunfire with the militants, a paramilitary general told CNN.
“We are very anxious about the safety of innocent civilians in Mosul city”, said Su’ad Jarbawi, Iraq country director for Mercy Corps, a humanitarian aid agency, in a statement.
The coalition in the battle for Mosul includes Shia-dominated Iraqi military forces advancing from the south, Kurdish peshmerga forces coming from the north and the deserts surrounding Mosul, and the Shiite Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), an Iranian-backed militia that is providing assistance on the outskirts of the city.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has underlined the importance of the ongoing battle to retake the strategic northern city of Mosul from the ISIS Takfir terrorist group, saying that the country is defending the entire world against terrorists.
Slier says the advance has both symbolical and strategic significance.
Those involved say it will not be an easy fight.
The offensive on Mosul is composed of an array of groups that are all now united in the goal of defeating ISIS, but whose interests don’t necessarily align beyond that.
Iraqi security forces earlier retook those two cities from IS. Up to 1.5 million are thought to be in Mosul and there are fears the militants will use the civilians as human shields as Iraqi forces get closer to Mosul. The US is providing these troops with air support. Kurdish fighters moving along the narrow village roads stuck to paths they had already used and walked in single file.
He said: “we hope that our partners from the worldwide coalition realize what could be the consequences of large groups of IS fighters roaming the Mideast region”.
The U.S. -led coalition is providing airstrikes in support of the operation, and more than 100 American soldiers are embedded with Iraqi forces, with hundreds more serving in a support role.
He stressed that the battle is led by Iraq and not a foreign invasion, though it has military support from a broad US -led coalition.
In the worst-case scenario, more than one million civilians could flee Iraq’s second largest city, UNHCR said. They have vowed to fight Isis once forces enter the city.
A refugee camp with some 5,000 tents is being set up by Iraqi and Kurdish authorities east of Mosul.
Many of those who fled are now living in the city of Irbil, where they celebrated Tuesday when they heard Iraqi forces had entered their hometown. They yield to Turkey in Syria without a fight.
Mosul residents AFP was able to contact inside the city said many streets were completely closed at night and half empty during the day.
Around Mosul the ISIS is being attacked by hardly friendly forces.
But it has been shrinking steadily for more than a year and retaking Mosul would be a major setback for IS, all but ending its experiment in statehood.
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Returning Mosul to a functioning state will be an enormous task, and it’s unclear exactly what the plans are for the city if it’s liberated. Isis has an estimated 4000-8000 fighters in Mosul, but is increasingly recruiting children and other civilians for the battle. Now, with the launch of the campaign to retake Mosul, the extremists’ main stronghold, Iraqi forces are again operating under coalition air cover.
