SALAHUDDIN, Iraq: Iraqi forces are expected to face much fiercer resistance from Daesh in the next phase of the battle for Mosul, including booby traps that can blow up entire neighborhoods, the top Kurdish security official said on Sunday.
Masrour Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Security Council, said that even if Daesh is driven out of its main stronghold Mosul, that will not be enough to eliminate the group, and its radical ideology will survive.
“The fight against ISIS is going to be a long fight,” Barzani told Reuters. “Not only militarily but also economically, ideologically.”
He spoke as Iraq’s special forces worked Sunday to clear neighborhoods on the eastern edge of Mosul as bombings launched by the extremist group elsewhere in the country killed at least 20 people.
“There are a lot of civilians and we are trying to protect them,” said Lt. Col. Muhanad Al-Timimi.
“This is one of the hardest battles that we’ve faced till now.”
Barzani also said that Iraqi forces have made quick progress clearing out terrorists from eastern Mosul after Kurdish peshmerga units broke through its first lines of defense.
“As they are getting more desperate, expectations are that they might fight more fiercely as you close in,” said Barzani, 47, son of veteran Kurdish leader and KRG President Masoud Barzani. So far in the three-week operation, Daesh has deployed drones strapped with explosives, long-range artillery shells filled with chlorine and mustard gas and highly effective snipers, said Barzani. Kurdish forces have destroyed more than 50 car bombs.
And he cautioned that western Mosul will be a more complex campaign, with a vast number of narrow streets that can’t accommodate large military vehicles and an enemy that will fight to the death to defend the capital of its so-called caliphate.
“There are many different IEDs (improvised explosive devices) that they put in different places, come up with different tactics. Many that are used like networks,” Barzani said.
“So in one house they are putting one IED and trying to hide it. And once it explodes then the entire neighborhood explodes.”
The Mosul campaign is the most critical land battle in Iraq since a US-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Iraqi leaders are also under pressure to ensure that the offensive does not inflame sectarian tensions in Mosul and in the country as a whole.
That’s why Shiite militias and Kurdish peshmerga forces are not fighting inside Mosul, although some Iraqi forces who are taking part have been flying Shiite banners on their vehicles, an act that has angered Sunni residents.
Barzani called on Iraq’s complex patchwork of sects and ethnic communities to set aside their political differences or risk long-term instability.
When the Daesh seized Mosul in 2014, some members of that minority sect supported the group after accusing the government of widespread discrimination, an allegation it denied.
“Winning the peace after winning the war is equally important,” said Barzani.
“The number one point to prevent the rise of terrorist and radical organizations is to make sure there is political reconciliation and a political agreement among all the components so that no one will feel like an outcast.”
The KRG’s counter-terrorism forces and intelligence agencies report to Barzani, 47, son of veteran Kurdish leader and KRG President Masoud Barzouni. As a teenager, Masrour joined the peshmerga, who were fighting Saddam Hussein at the time.
Some 35,000 Daesh terrorists have been killed inside Iraq yet there are still tens of thousands arrayed against the Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga, said Barzani.
“Every day, every week, every month they are trying to recruit new people, new fighters are joining,” he said, though he added the numbers have recently decreased.
Hundreds of Daesh terrorists have been caught trying to disguise themselves as displaced Iraqis since the Mosul campaign began on Oct. 17, said Barzani.
The world’s most feared and violent militant group has tried to set up sleeper cells in Erbil, capital of the autonomous Kurdish region, and elsewhere, in order to try and divert attention away from the Mosul campaign.
“We have captured a number of sleeping cells, or people that were disguised as IDPs (internally displaced people). Hundreds of them actually,” Barzani said.
Daesh terrorists, who have been fighting Iraqi forces, are mosty Iraqis but there are also significant numbers of foreign fighters from other parts of the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Africa, said Barzani.
“We do believe that Daesh is the byproduct, is the result of a political failure, the political system that failed in this country,” he said.
Fight against Daesh will not end in Mosul: Masrour Barzani
Fight against Daesh will not end in Mosul: Masrour Barzani
Israel’s settler movement takes victory lap as a sparse outpost becomes a settlement within a month
- Smotrich, who has been in charge of Israeli settlement policy for the past three years, has overseen an aggressive construction and expansion binge aimed at dismantling any remaining hopes of establishing a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank
YATZIV SETTLEMENT, West Bank: Celebratory music blasting from loudspeakers mixed with the sounds of construction, almost drowning out calls to prayer from a mosque in the Palestinian town across this West Bank valley.
Orthodox Jewish women in colorful head coverings, with babies on their hips, shared platters of fresh vegetables as soldiers encircled the hilltop, keeping guard.
The scene Monday reflected the culmination of Israeli settlers’ long campaign to turn this site, overlooking the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, into a settlement. Over the years, they fended off plans to build a hospital for Palestinian children on the land, always holding tight to the hope the land would one day become theirs.
That moment is now, they say.
Smotrich goes on settlement spree
After two decades of efforts, it took just a month for their new settlement, called “Yatziv,” to go from an unauthorized outpost of a few mobile homes to a fully recognized settlement. Fittingly, the new settlement’s name means “stable” in Hebrew.
“We are standing stable here in Israel,” Finance Minister and settler leader Bezalel Smotrich told The Associated Press at Monday’s inauguration ceremony. “We’re going to be here forever. We will never establish a Palestinian state here.”
With leaders like Smotrich holding key positions in Israel’s government and establishing close ties with the Trump administration, settlers are feeling the wind at their backs.
Smotrich, who has been in charge of Israeli settlement policy for the past three years, has overseen an aggressive construction and expansion binge aimed at dismantling any remaining hopes of establishing a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank.
While most of the world considers the settlements illegal, their impact on the ground is clear, with Palestinians saying the ever-expanding construction hems them in and makes it nearly impossible to establish a viable independent state. The Palestinians seek the West Bank, captured by Israel in 1967, as part of a future state.
With Netanyahu and Trump, settlers feel emboldened
Settlers had long set their sights on the hilltop, thanks to its position in a line of settlements surrounding Jerusalem and because they said it was significant to Jewish history. But they put up the boxy prefab homes in November because days earlier, Palestinian attackers had stabbed an Israeli to death at a nearby junction.
The attack created an impetus to justify the settlement, the local settlement council chair, Yaron Rosenthal, told AP. With the election of Israel’s far-right government in late 2022, Trump’s return to office last year and the November attack, conditions were ripe for settlers to make their move, Rosenthal said.
“We understood that there was an opportunity,” he said. “But we didn’t know it would happen so quickly.”
“Now there is the right political constellation for this to happen.”
Smotrich announced approval of the outpost, along with 18 others, on Dec. 21. That capped 20 years of effort, said Nadia Matar, a settler activist.
“Shdema was nearly lost to us,” said Matar, using the name of an Israeli military base at the site. “What prevented that outcome was perseverance.”
Back in 2006, settlers were infuriated upon hearing that Israel’s government was in talks with the US to build a Palestinian children’s hospital on the land, said Hagit Ofran, a director at Peace Now, an anti-settlement watchdog group, especially as the US Agency for International Development was funding a “peace park” at the base of the hill.
The mayor of Beit Sahour urged the US Consulate to pressure Israel to begin hospital construction, while settlers began weekly demonstrations at the site calling on Israel to quash the project, according to consulate files obtained through WikiLeaks.
It was “interesting” that settlers had “no religious, legal, or ... security claim to that land,” wrote consulate staffer Matt Fuller at the time, in an email he shared with the AP. “They just don’t want the Palestinians to have it — and for a hospital no less — a hospital that would mean fewer permits for entry to Jerusalem for treatment.”
The hospital was never built. The site was converted into a military base after the Netanyahu government came to power in 2009. From there, settlers quickly established a foothold by creating makeshift cultural center at the site, putting on lectures, readings and exhibits
Speaking to the AP, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister at the time the hospital was under discussion, said that was the tipping point.
“Once it is military installation, it is easier than to change its status into a new outpost, a new settlement and so on,” he said.
Olmert said Netanyahu — who has served as prime minister nearly uninterrupted since then — was “committed to entirely different political directions from the ones that I had,” he said. “They didn’t think about cooperation with the Palestinians.”
Palestinians say the land is theirs
The continued legalization of settlements and spiking settler violence — which rose by 27 percent in 2025, according to Israel’s military — have cemented a fearful status quo for West Bank Palestinians.
The land now home to Yatziv was originally owned by Palestinians from Beit Sahour, said the town’s mayor, Elias Isseid.
“These lands have been owned by families from Beit Sahour since ancient times,” he said.
Isseid worries more land loss is to come. Yatziv is the latest in a line of Israeli settlements to pop up around Beit Sahour, all of which are connected by a main highway that runs to Jerusalem without entering Palestinian villages. The new settlement “poses a great danger to our children, our families,” he said.
A bypass road, complete with a new yellow gate, climbs up to Yatziv. The peace park stands empty.
