Clashes across the Tigris as battle for west Mosul looms
The target, which was being used to dig earth berms to fortify ISIS positions, exploded into a blaze that sent white smoke into the sky. (AFP)
Reuters, Mosul
Friday, 27 January 2017
An Iraqi soldier stared patiently through a high-powered scope until he spotted a bulldozer across the Tigris River. He alerted his elite unit, which fired a missile with a boom so loud it blew a metal door behind the soldiers off its hinges.
The target, which was being used to dig earth berms to fortify ISIS positions, exploded into a blaze that sent white smoke into the sky.
Militants could be seen gathering at the bulldozer as it burned. Some arrived on foot, others in a pickup truck or on a motorcycle, seemingly unfazed by the prospect of another rocket landing.
“The terrorist driving that bulldozer is burning. He is cooked,” said Mostafa Majeed, the soldier manning the scope.
In three months of Iraq's biggest military operation since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, government forces have seized most of east Mosul.
But they have yet to cross the Tigris, leaving the western half of the city still firmly in the hands of the extremists, who declared their caliphate here two and a half years ago.
Now, the troops are firing across the river to harass the militants and disrupt their fortifications, in preparation for the next phase of the campaign: the fight for the other side.
“The idea is to keep making life tough for them from our position, to kill them and prevent them from escaping as other forces surround them from other directions,” Major Mohamed Ali told Reuters.
The methodical advance of Iraqi forces is a sharp contrast to 2014, when the army collapsed and fled in the face of a force of only an estimated 800 ISIS militants that swept into Mosul and swiftly seized a third of Iraq.
The soldiers appear disciplined as they position themselves on rooftops behind green sandbags, painstakingly watching the militants' every move through binoculars and scopes, hoping to get a clear shot with sniper rifles.
To get a closer look, the men send up a computer-operated white drone aircraft, propelling it over Islamic State territory for more accurate intelligence.
ISIS militants are gathered at their stronghold of Abu Seif village below steep hills and Mosul Airport, just beyond the Tigris.
The group is expected to put up fierce resistance when the next phase of the offensive kicks off, possibly within days.
If the militants lose Mosul, that would probably mark the end of their self-proclaimed caliphate that has ruled over millions of people in Iraq and Syria. Iraqi authorities and their US allies still expect the fighters to wage an insurgency in Iraq and inspire attacks against the West.
Militants could be seen, through a scope, monitoring the rapid reaction force from the other side of the river.
“They watch us, we watch them,” said Majeed as he spotted a vehicle on the move.
Although there are plenty of rockets like the one that took out the bulldozer, the Iraqi forces say they use the heavy weapons only against important targets or when there is a substantial gathering of extremists in one spot.
“If it is fewer than nine terrorists we hold fire,” said one soldier.
Snipers are used more freely. One hid a few hundred feet from the east bank of the Tigris and opened fire every ten minutes or so.
Hours after the rocket demolished the bulldozer, ISIS retaliated, firing a series of mortars towards the rapid reaction force.
One crashed a few streets away. Another landed closer. A third hit the river about 200 meters away.
Last Update: Friday, 27 January 2017 KSA 17:42 - GMT 14:42
https://english.alarabiya.net/en/Ne...he-Tigris-as-battle-for-west-Mosul-looms.html
Iraqi troops push into IS-held villages north of Mosul
Civilians flee their villages because of fighting between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State militants, on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2017. (Khalid Mohammed/Associated Press)
By Mstyslav Chernov | AP January 26
MOSUL, Iraq — The Iraqi army, buoyed by their victory this month in liberating the eastern half of Mosul from Islamic State militants, is now pushing into IS-held villages north of the city, an Iraqi officer overseeing the operation said Thursday.
Lt. Col. Diya Lafta said troops from his 9th Division began advancing toward two villages just north of Mosul in the morning and “after a few hours they were liberated” from IS militants.
By afternoon, the village of Shereikhan had been largely freed of IS but fighting continued in the villages beyond, according to Associated Press reporters at the scene.
Thursday’s military operation forced hundreds of civilians to flee. Families escaping the clashes on foot clogged the road leading into Mosul as a cloud of smoke from an IS suicide bombing rose above the horizon.
According to one fleeing resident, who asked to only be identified by his nickname Abu Sajjad for fears for his own safety, said IS fighters still firmly controll a number of other villages along Mosul’s northern edge.
The push came after Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi earlier this week declared Mosul’s eastern half to be completely free of IS.
Iraqi forces launched the massive operation to retake Mosul in October. A U.S.-led coalition and Iraq’s own air force have been carrying out airstrikes in support of the military offensive but the troops’ advance has been painstakingly slow, in part to spare the lives of civilians trapped by the fighting and also because of heavy IS resistance.
In a statement Tuesday, al-Abadi hailed the “unmatched heroism of all security forces factions” and public support for the operation.
IS still firmly controls Mosul’s west, where the next phase of the fighting is expected to be much more difficult. The U.N. estimates that some 750,000 civilians are trapped in Mosul’s western sector under IS rule.
Mosul — Iraq’s second-largest city and the Islamic State group’s last urban stronghold in the country — fell to IS in the summer of 2014, when the militant group captures large swaths of northern and western Iraq.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...efe8eff0835_story.html?utm_term=.b7a4d1dcde93
