All bridges linking the east and west of the city, across the Tigris river, have been destroyed by air strikes.
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The Baghdad-based USA commander on the ground, Army Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, has said he believes us -backed forces will recapture both of Islamic State’s major strongholds – the cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria – within the next six months.
Announcing the new offensive Sunday, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi said, “Our forces are beginning the liberation of the citizens from the terror of Daesh”. In this instance, USA officials said they had determined that no civilians were present. But the Sunni militant group has been steadily losing territory, as backing by the US -led coalition proved critical for Iraqi government efforts clawing back territory lost to the extremists.
“Congratulations to Iraqi forces for completing complex maneuver ops to secure #Mosul airport from #ISIS terrorists”, he tweeted.
Forces on the ground officially in an advisory capacity have increasingly been involved in combat and have been more visible than ever on the front lines since the push on west Mosul began on February 19.
USA advisers are operating closer to the front lines in an attempt to help the Iraqis better coordinate their attacks.
According to reports, the use of commercial quad-copter drones, converted into tiny bombers, are posing a big challenged to the security forces, which are trying to retake Mosul from the Islamic State group since early November.
After taking the eastern half of the city, Iraqi forces halted operations for three weeks in order to form a strategy that would retake the city’s western half.
The Iraqi military deployed F-16 fighter jets to hit targets near the country’s western border with Syria on Friday, according to an air force commander cited by the AP news agency.
“They are most of the way through the airfield”, Brigadier General Matt Isler, a senior US Air Force officer in the US-led headquarters in Baghdad, said late Thursday afternoon.
That is not a view shared by many analysts, however, who believe that the physical layout of the western part of the city – which includes narrow, winding streets – will require in a prolonged, brutal battle to banish IS once and for all.
The gains mark the first key moves in the battle, now in its sixth day, to rout IS militants from the western half of the city of Mosul, the extremists’ last urban stronghold in Iraq.
“They were really scared”, he said. “And that fundamental principle isn’t going to change”, he said, adding that previous deployments of USA forces into both countries followed that formula.
At Brookings, Dunford mentioned the need to weigh the views of regional players, such as key American ally Turkey, which opposes US-backed Kurdish groups now carrying out some of the most effective fighting against ISIS in Syria.
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A Reuters correspondent near the airport saw nine families living in a house where residents with full beards served trays of tea to security forces. In one camp the IRC is running a safe space for children to learn and recover from the trauma of what they’ve been through.
