MOSUL: Iraqi forces pushed deeper into Mosul’s Old City on Monday after launching a final assault on Daesh, warning civilians to stay inside and telling terrorists to “surrender or die.”
Iraqi forces launched the operation on Sunday to retake the district, the last part of Iraq’s second city still held by Daesh after a months-long offensive.
Commanders say the terrorists are putting up fierce resistance and there are fears for more than 100,000 civilians believed to be trapped in the maze of narrow streets.
Staff Maj. Gen. Maan Al-Saadi, a top commander in Iraq’s elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), said that heavy fighting had resumed at dawn on Monday.
“At 6:00 a.m., we pushed deeper into the Old City and took control of new areas in the Faruq neighborhood,” he said. “Daesh resistance has been fierce,” he said.
“They have blocked every entrance, planted IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and booby trapped houses our forces might be near,” he said.
“Penetrating was very difficult. Today the fighting is face to face.”
The push into Mosul’s historic heart on the west bank of the river Tigris marks the culmination of a months-long campaign by Iraqi forces to retake Daesh’s last major urban stronghold in the country.
The US-led coalition battling Daesh in Iraq and Syria has backed the offensive including with months of airstrikes.
The loss of Mosul would mark the effective end of the Iraqi portion of the cross-border “caliphate” Daesh declared in summer 2014 after seizing swathes of Iraq and Syria.
Sheltering from relentless fire and explosions near a sniper position on the edge of the Old City, CTS Capt.Ahmed Jassem described a bitter fight.
“We can’t bring our vehicles into these narrow streets. It means they cannot use as many car bombs either, but they use motorcycle bombs and even IEDs mounted on remote-controlled toy cars,” he said.
Iraqi forces stationed Humvees by the Grand Mosque on the retaken east side of Mosul, facing the Old City and mounted with speakers.
The loudspeakers blared messages to Daesh fighters, telling them: “You have only this choice: surrender or die.”
Late on Sunday, Iraqi forces dropped nearly 500,000 leaflets over the city, warning that they had “started attacking from all directions.”
The leaflets urge civilians to “stay away from open places and... exploit any opportunity that arises during the fighting” to escape.
The UN has said Daesh may be holding more than 100,000 civilians as human shields in the Old City.
Only a few hundred meters from the heaviest fighting, small groups of civilians gathered, sheltering from the scorching sun more than from mortar rounds falling into the neighborhood.
“We moved to a camp in Hammam Al-Alil when the neighborhood was liberated, but homes were being looted so we came back to protect our property,” said Nabil Hamed Khattab, a 56-year old who did not flinch when a mortar round came crashing down a few blocks away.
Commanders have said the fighting is expected to be very difficult and could last weeks.
Surrounded by Iraqi forces on three sides and blocked on the other by the Tigris River that runs through Mosul, the terrorists are cornered.
Iraqi forces launched a vast operation to retake Mosul in October, seizing the city’s eastern side in January and starting an assault on its western part in February.
The International Rescue Committee, a major aid group operating in Iraq, has warned that already-traumatized civilians risk getting caught up in fierce street fighting. It urged coalition and Iraqi forces to do “everything in their power” to keep civilians safe.
Save the Children warned that some 50,000 children were trapped in the Old City.
“They are running out of food and water, and face violence wherever they turn,” the charity’s Ana Locsin said.
Since the start of the battle to retake Mosul, an estimated 862,000 people have been displaced. Around 195,000 have since returned, mainly to the city’s east.
It was from the Old City’s emblematic Al-Nuri mosque in July 2014 that Daesh chief Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi made his only public appearance.
He urged Muslims worldwide to move to the group’s “caliphate” straddling Iraq and Syria.
The terrorists have since lost most of the territory they once controlled in the face of US-backed offensives in Iraq and in Syria, where a Kurdish-Arab alliance is advancing on the group’s last Syrian stronghold Raqqa.
It is not clear how many Daesh members remain in Mosul, where many foreign fighters have joined local jihadists since the city was taken.
Iraq forces push into Mosul Old City, warn Daesh ‘surrender or die’
Iraq forces push into Mosul Old City, warn Daesh ‘surrender or die’
Baghdad says it will prosecute Daesh militants being moved from Syria to Iraq
- The US military started the transfer process on Friday with the first Daesh prisoners moved from Syria to Iraq
BAGHDAD: Baghdad will prosecute and try militants from the Daesh group who are being transferred from prisons and detention camps in neighboring Syria to Iraq under a US-brokered deal, Iraq said Sunday.
The announcement from Iraq’s highest judicial body came after a meeting of top security and political officials who discussed the ongoing transfer of some 9,000 IS detainees who have been held in Syria since the militant group’s collapse there in 2019.
The need to move them came after Syria’s nascent government forces last month routed Syrian Kurdish-led fighters — once top US allies in the fight against Daesh — from areas of northeastern Syria they had controlled for years and where they had been guarding camps holding Daesh prisoners.
Syrian troops seized the sprawling Al-Hol camp — housing thousands, mostly families of Daesh militants — from the Kurdish-led force, which withdrew as part of a ceasefire. Troops last Monday also took control of a prison in the northeastern town of Shaddadeh, from where some Daesh detainees had escaped during the fighting. Syrian state media later reported that many were recaptured.
Now, the clashes between the Syrian military and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, sparked fears of Daesh activating its sleeper cells in those areas and of Daesh detainees escaping. The Syrian government under its initial agreement with the Kurds said it would take responsibility of the Daesh prisoners.
Baghdad has been particularly worried that escaped Daesh detainees would regroup and threaten Iraq’s security and its side of the vast Syria-Iraq border.
Once in Iraq, Daesh prisoners accused of terrorism will be investigated by security forces and tried in domestic courts, Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said.
The US military started the transfer process on Friday with the first Daesh prisoners moved from Syria to Iraq. On Sunday, another 125 Daesh prisoners were transferred, according to two Iraqi security officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
So far, 275 prisoners have made it to Iraq, a process that officials say has been slow as the US military has been transporting them by air.
Both Damascus and Washington have welcomed Baghdad’s offer to have the prisoners transferred to Iraq.
Iraq’s parliament will meet later on Sunday to discuss the ongoing developments in Syria, where its government forces are pushing to boost their presence along the border.
The fighting between the Syrian government and the SDF has mostly halted with a ceasefire that was recently extended. According to Syria’s Defense Ministry, the truce was extended to support the ongoing transfer operation by US forces.
The Daesh group was defeated in Iraq in 2017, and in Syria two years later, but Daesh sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries. As a key US ally in the region, the SDF played a major role in defeating Daesh.
During the battles against Daesh, thousands of extremists and tens of thousands of women and children linked to them were taken and held in prisons and at the Al-Hol camp. The sprawling Al-Hol camp hosts thousands of women and children.
Last year, US troops and their partner SDF fighters detained more than 300 Daesh militants in Syria and killed over 20. An ambush in December by Daesh militants killed two US soldiers and one American civilian interpreter in Syria.
