SOUTH OF MOSUL, Iraq, BAGHDAD U.S. -backed Iraqi forces closing in on the Islamic State-held western half of Mosul prepared on Tuesday to storm the airport and a nearby military base on its southern outskirts to create a bridgehead for a thrust into the city.
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The site has been under the control of ISIL since its militants overran Mosul in June 2014.
Iraqi police forces attacked the disused airport, on the southern approach to the city, which is still held by the jihadists.
“West Mosul had the potential certainly of being more hard, with house-to-house fighting on a larger and more bloody scale”, said Patrick Skinner, from the Soufan Group intelligence consultancy.
“Specifically, they’re becoming increasingly paranoid” as Syrian Democratic Forces move in on them, Air Force Col. John Dorrian told reporters on Wednesday.
“They’re scared”, said Iraqi federal police solider Hashem Ali, explaining that he’s seen IS target fleeing civilians with sniper and mortar fire.
Counter-terrorism service (CTS) troops advance towards Ghozlani military complex, south of Mosul, Iraq, Feb. 23, 2017.
Hundreds of thousands of citizens are also trapped in neighbourhoods controlled by IS.
Meanwhile, Iraqi state TV broadcast footage on Tuesday showing Iraqi fighter jets pounding IS positions, vehicles and personnel in Mosul’s western half.
The operation to recapture western Mosul was launched on February 19.
Capturing Mosul’s airport and the surrounding area would be a major win for the government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. He said the casualty rates were nothing like the first days of the Mosul offensive in October, when he admitted 90 people in a single day.
“The situation is distressing. People, right now, are in trouble”, Lise Grande, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, said in a statement. “We are hearing reports of parents struggling to feed their children and to heat their homes”.
The aid community has warned however that the push on the west bank could yet trigger mass displacement and relief workers are scrambling to build new camps around Mosul.
Meanwhile, aid agencies are anxious and preparing for the possibility that up to 250,000 people might flee the Mosul in the coming days or weeks.
The battle for western Mosul, the extremist group’s last major urban bastion in Iraq, is expected to be most daunting yet.
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A fighter of the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization) paramilitaries stands guard near the front-line village of Ayn al-Hisan, west of Mosul, where Iraqi forces were preparing to launch an offensive to retake the western side of Mosul from the Islamic State.
