Iraq troops vow to tighten noose on Islamic State in Mosul

BAWIZA, Iraq: Iraqi soldiers fighting just north of Mosul, within sight of city neighborhoods, said on Sunday they were ready to tighten the noose around Islamic State militants waging a brutal defense of their Iraqi stronghold.

Four weeks into the campaign to crush Islamic State in Mosul, the city is almost surrounded but the militants’ defenses have been breached so far only to the east, where they have battled elite troops for control of up to a dozen districts.

The battle for Mosul, the largest city held by the ultra-hardline Islamist group in Iraq and Syria, is the largest military operation in Iraq in a decade of turmoil unleashed by the 2003 US invasion which toppled Saddam Hussein.

Iraq’s Shia-led government, which has assembled a 100,000-strong coalition of troops, security forces, Kurdish peshmerga fighters and mainly Shia militias, backed by US air power, says it will mark the end of Islamic State in Iraq.

But it says the fight may be a long one.

An army special forces officer on the northern front line said his men aimed to target Hadba, the first neighborhood ahead of them within city limits. The district was visible from his position in the village of Bawiza.

Brigadier Ali Abdulla said Islamic State fighters had been pushed out of Bawiza and another village, Saada, although progress had been slowed by the presence of civilians he said were being used by the militants as human shields.

“Our approach (to Hadba) will be very slow and cautious so that we can reach the families and free them from Daesh’s (Islamic State’s) grip,” Abdulla said.

The timing of the decision to move on Hadba would also depend on progress on other fronts he said. Security forces are advancing to the south of Mosul, targeting the city’s airport on the west bank of the Tigris river.

Abdulla said Islamic State was using suicide car bombs, roadside bombs, snipers and long range mortars to try to hold back the army advance in the north – all tactics it has used to lethal effect on the eastern front as well.

Another officer, Captain Oqba Nafaa, said the militants were still fighting in Saada, using a network of tunnels to carry out surprise strikes on the attacking forces.

That also echoed the urban warfare which they have deployed to lethal effect in the east of the city against elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) forces and an armored division.

In some districts, control has changed hands three or four times as the militants, using tunnels and exploiting the presence of civilians as cover, have launched night-time attacks and reversed military gains of the previous day.

One resident of al-Qadisiya al-Thaniya district, which the elite Counter Terrorism Service entered on Friday, said the special forces later pulled back and Islamic State fighters returned.

“They came back to us again, and this is what we feared. At night there were fierce clashes and we heard powerful explosions,” she told Reuters.

TROOPS TAKE NIMRUD

About 30 km (20 miles) south of Mosul, troops recaptured the town of Nimrud on Sunday, next to the ancient Assyrian city which was overrun by Islamic State militants two years ago.

“Troops from the Ninth Armoured Division liberated Nimrud town completely and raised the Iraqi flag above its buildings,” a military statement said. The town of Nimrud lies 1 km (less than 1 mile) west of the ruins of the 3,000-year-old city.

The soldiers also captured the village of Numaniya, on the edge of Nimrud, which was once the capital of an Assyrian empire stretching from Egypt to parts of modern-day Iran and Turkey.

The Iraqi government says Nimrud was bulldozed last year as part of Islamic State’s campaign to destroy symbols which the Sunni Muslim zealots consider idolatrous.

Video footage released by Islamic State, purportedly from Nimrud, also showed its fighters destroying relics with electric drills and explosives.

More than 54,000 people have been displaced so far in the four-week Mosul campaign.

The Norwegian Refugee Council said on Sunday tens of thousands of people “lack access to water, food, electricity and basic health services” in areas recaptured by the army in Mosul and surrounding towns and villages.

Ultimately, 700,000 people were likely to need shelter, food, water or medical support.

In the north of the country, Iraqi Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State unlawfully destroyed Arab homes in scores of towns and villages in what may amount to a war crime, the U.S.-based rights group Human Rights Watch said on Sunday.