Iraq's war against IS terrorism | Updates and Discussions

[Hindustani78]

US soldier observes the 37th Brigade, 9th Iraqi Army Division drive from one objective to the next across the open desert at Al Asthana ridge, Feb 27 2017.

 

[Malik Alashter]

Thats the heart of mosul

https://twitter.com/x/status/838317913895481344

 

[Hindustani78]

5 March 2017
Iraqi security forces launch a rocket against Islamic State militants positions during clashes in the western side of Mosul, Iraq.

 

[Hindustani78]

NINEVEH, Iraq
http://aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/16-killed-as-iraqi-forces-push-deep-into-w-mosul/764494

At least 16 people were killed Sunday in deadly clashes between Iraqi forces and Daesh militants in western Mosul, according to a local activist.

The violence broke out when Iraqi forces attempted to storm into the Daesh-held Nabi Sheth area in western Mosul, Luqman Omar al-Taei told Anadolu Agency.

“Scores of people were injured in deadly confrontations and airstrikes in the area,” he said.

Iraqi authorities have yet to confirm the fatalities.

Federal police officer Sabhan al-Shuweili, for his part, said Iraqi forces were attempting to advance into the Nabi Sheth and al-Dandan districts in Mosul’s western side.

In mid-February, Iraqi forces -- backed by a U.S.-led air coalition -- began fresh operations aimed at purging Daesh terrorists from western Mosul.

The offensive came as part of a wider campaign launched last October to retake the entire city, which Daesh overran -- along with much of northern and western Iraq -- in mid-2014.

 

[Sargon of Akkad]

In memory of officer and martyr Abu Bakr Abbas Al-Samarrai who was savagely murdered by ISIS less than two weeks ago. His expression of defiance shortly before his execution has become another symbol of the fight against the filth.

Most recent map of the situation in Mosul:

Resident civilians being freed:

Sad photo of the ground realities:

The video speaks for itself.

https://twitter.com/x/status/838761795582066688

https://twitter.com/x/status/838756369771683840

Sensible and correct message by the commander to the people of Mosul.

 

[Malik Alashter]

https://twitter.com/x/status/839029967887433729

https://twitter.com/x/status/839029097422544896

https://twitter.com/x/status/839018980031418368

https://twitter.com/x/status/839028388698316800

 

[Hindustani78]

http://zeenews.india.com/world/2100-iran-fighters-killed-in-iraq-syria-official_1984198.html

Tehran: More than 2,000 fighters sent from Iran have been killed in Iraq and Syria, the head of Iran's veterans' affairs office said today.


"Some 2,100 martyrs have been martyred so far in Iraq or other places defending the holy mausoleums," Mohammad Ali Shahidi told the state-run IRNA news agency.

Shahidi, who is head of Iran's Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs, was speaking at a conference on martyrdom culture in Tehran.

The figure was more than double the number he gave in November, which referred only to Syria.

Iran is, with Russia, the main military backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and also organises militias fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq.

Shahidi did not provide details on the nationalities of those killed.

Iran oversees "volunteer" fighters recruited from among its own nationals as well as Shiite communities in neighbouring Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The families of those killed in battle are given Iranian citizenship under a law passed last May.

Tehran refers to the fighters as "defenders of the shrines" -- a reference to Shiite holy sites in Iraq and Syria that have been targeted by Sunni extremists.


First Published: Tuesday, March 7, 2017 - 14:43

 

[Hindustani78]

Iraqi forces fully capture al-Tayaran neighborhood in W. Mosul

MOSUL, IRAQ - MARCH 07: Iraqi forces keep guard after they have fully captured Mosul's al-Tayaran neighborhood, where the Turkish consulate is located, from Daesh militants, as the operation to retake western part of the city from Daesh terrorists continues on March 07, 2017 in Mosul, Iraq. ( Yunus Keleş - Anadolu Agency )

 

[Hindustani78]

Iraqi Army soldiers advance towards villages held by Islamic State militants, on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq, Jan. 26, 2017. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

http://indianexpress.com/article/wo...qi-forces-to-prevail-us-general-says-4559132/

A US general in the international coalition in Iraq says that Islamic State forces defending western Mosul are disorganised and some foreign fighters are trying to leave the city. Government forces nonetheless face a “very hard fight” in the battle for the city but they will prevail, US Air Force Brigadier General Matthew Isler said. Iraqi forces recaptured the eastern half of Mosul in January after 100 days of fighting, and launched an attack on districts lying west of the Tigris river on Feb. 19.

Isler said Islamic State’s operational leaders and foreign fighters were withdrawing from the battlefield, leaving local militants to fend off advances by Iraqi forces. “We do see an intent for them to leave the city. I think that many of them are going to try to find a way out.”

Though vastly outnumbered, the militants are putting up fierce resistance to hold on to their last major stronghold. “At the tactical level it is a very hard fight,” said Isler, deputy commander for the coalition’s air forces.

But, he siad: “They’re not well-organised and well-integrated and as a result of that, Iraqi security forces are able to make significant progress each day.” Many of Islamic State’s operational leaders were killed before Iraqi forces began attacking the west, Isler said. There was little doubt that Iraqi security forces would eventually prevail against Islamic State.

“The game is up,” Isler said. “They have lost this fight and what you’re seeing is a delaying action.” Many of Islamic State’s operational leaders were killed before Iraqi forces began attacking the west, Isler said.

Although Iraqi forces have effectively isolated Mosul by cutting the city off from the rest of its self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria, Isler said the militants were still able to travel to the town of Tel Afar to the west. Coalition airstrikes in the run-up to the start of the attack on the west had made a significant impact on the course of the battle, Isler said. Many of Islamic State’s operational leaders were killed before Iraqi forces began attacking the west.

“We took out their command and control, the Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIED) and weapons caches. They’re using more indirect fire. It’s not precise.” Although Islamic State car bombs still pose a major threat, Isler said fewer than one in 10 now reached their target.

Isler was speaking at the Qayyarah West Airfield, also known as “Q-West”, which Islamic State overran in the summer of 2014 after taking Mosul. Coalition advisers have become more visible near the frontlines since December, when Iraqi forces entered an “operational refit” after progress in the east slowed.

Before that, coalition advisers were working with Iraqi forces at the division level, whereas now they are embedded at the brigade level making tactical decisions, Isler said. “Forty miles north, you are witnessing the defeat of Daesh,” said Isler, standing on a runway to which Islamic State militants took a jackhammer before being driven out by Iraqi forces last year.

The repaired main runway is now used by the coalition to resupply its troops in the field and by the Iraqi air force, which is flying no less than 50 sorties per day. On one of the blast walls enclosing the airfield, the words “The State of the Caliphate will remain” are still visible despite being crossed out. More recent graffitti daubed by the base’s American residents reads: “Make Iraq Great Again”.

 

[Sargon of Akkad]

Neglected under ISIS, schools in eastern Mosul overflow with students once again
PATH TO PROGRESS
Just weeks after the eastern part of the city was liberated, schools are scrambling to accommodate eager learners. Education suffered badly under ISIS, which imposed a curriculum filled with violent viewpoints and drove away students fearful of being forcefully recruited.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor | Caption

Scott Peterson
Staff writer | @peterson__scott
MARCH 7, 2017 MOSUL, IRAQ—Classes are overflowing at Al-Muthanna primary school in eastern Mosul, just weeks after Iraqi security forces ended the self-declared Islamic State’s nearly three-year reign here.

The melodic chanting of schoolchildren is punctuated by mortar fire shot from a nearby military base, as the battle to liberate western Mosul rages just across the Tigris River. But even that sound is welcome to those busily trying to resuscitate an education system stunted by a jihadist curriculum and IS’s unforgiving regime.

“This noise, when we hear this, we are happy because they are attacking IS – we are so happy!” says an English teacher who gave her name as Fatima, as the mortars let off another volley.


Education was a key casualty of the occupation, which began in June 2014. Some residents describe threats to teach the new IS curriculum or be jailed; others talk of how they were forced to stay at home for years, drinking tea and nervously smoking as the world outside changed unrecognizably. Students – also often locked as safely as possible behind closed doors – slowly gave in to despair as opportunities disappeared.

For residents of an ancient Iraqi city long renowned for the quality of its education and its historical embrace of ethnic diversity, it was a devastating loss.

“In the IS time, the oxygen was different,” says Fatima, referring to the suffocating existence under the jihadists. Now, she says, “it’s a new life."

IS’s curriculum emphasized prayer and mosque life – and perpetual war. Primary school math books taught that one bullet plus one bullet equals two bullets, and older children were indoctrinated in the virtues of IS and their jihadist “holy war,” in which killing all “infidels” was a required test of faith.

“We need at least five to 10 years to return and clean out what IS has done to our education and our society,” says Mahdi Saleh Marie, a professor of modern European history and historical texts who taught at Mosul University – which became an IS base, was renamed “Islamic University,” and is now largely a burnt ruin, part of its library reduced to ash.

“The main IS goal was to destroy education, to make their caliphate,” says Professor Marie, who refused to teach during the IS era and kept a low profile. In charge of a city of some 2 million residents at its peak, IS was unable to force all students to go to school, or all teachers into class.


“IS came smoothly, kindly, but after two to three months, their mask was gone, and people directly recognized the purpose behind their actions,” says Marie. His eldest son, a college engineering student, was fatally struck by shrapnel from an IS mortar that hit near their home in January, just hours before their neighborhood was freed from IS.

“There is no limit for them,” he adds. “They are trying to teach how to fight, how to kill anyone in the world who is their enemy. Christian, Jewish, even us [Muslims]. If you are not with them, you are their enemy.”

A violent curriculum
The Save the Children charity last November warned that more than 1 million Iraqi children in Mosul had been “out of school or forced to learn from an IS curriculum.”


That curriculum includes a text for 6-year-olds titled, “The Islamic State is Remaining and Expanding,” according to a late-2016 report by the Iraqi Institute for Development (IID), a local peacemaker organization that first formed in Mosul in 2003.

Math books ask students to calculate the number of explosives that can be produced by an IS bomb-making factory, notes IID. One problem asks students to figure out how many Shiite “unbelievers” – Muslims deemed heretics by the Sunni extremists of IS – can be killed by a suicide car bomb.

The plus sign was apparently forbidden, because IS saw it as symbolizing a Christian cross.


“This will have a significant impact on the minds of children … and will lead to the emergence of a new radical, violent, and bloody generation,” concluded IID.

Childlike joy
Yet today, the students’ smiles are irrepressible.

“Look at our children, they have come here with pleasure, despite the risk of [IS quad-copter] drones and bombs,” says Ahmad Maree Khatab, a high school English teacher with purple-tinted glasses and a carefully trimmed goatee, as he waits for his two sons to finish class at the primary school.


“They are happy despite the war, despite the threat of IS, because IS is ignorant – they were not educated,” says Mr. Khatab. “All our sons refuse, refuse, refuse this [IS] curriculum. It’s about killing, it is against humanity … it spreads killing, kidnapping, and hate.

“Their curriculum is just IS, and you must kill everyone else,” says Khatab. “Our children – most of them were shocked by IS, and with the help of God we will defeat them.”

A tough road for high-schoolers
The Resalah Islamiya High School for boys, where Khatab teaches, exemplifies how the IS legacy is difficult to erase.


The building sits on a main road, and did double duty as an IS base. More than a month after Iraqi forces declared eastern Mosul liberated, all the windows are still broken, and there is diesel fuel smeared in hallways, classrooms, and the director’s office – evidence that IS tried to burn the place down.

“Now all the classes are full, take a look,” says Assam Mohsin Jalili, the gray-mustachioed director in a black fez cap, whose name adorns the list of past directors painted on a board in the office. Two tall sporting trophies from earlier days sit high on a shelf, having survived IS. A sizable chunk of ceiling plaster has fallen, and sheets cover the diesel spill on the couch.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor | Caption
“Now if you talk to students, they feel very bad and sad, because 2 ½ to 3 years of their lives are gone,” says Mr. Jalili. Before IS came, 1,100 young men studied here. Four hundred fled with their families, and soon after, IS came to the school and vowed to recruit 400 of those who remained.

“They wanted to talk about jihad,” recalls Jalili. “The next day only 20 students came.”


That figure finally grew to 40 – all of them, says Jalili, “sons of IS.” The staff of 40 teachers were given a letter with a choice to teach or not. Feeling safer with a collective decision, they all refused, along with Jalili, and were sent home.

Now he pores over a list of teachers. Some are still displaced by the events in Mosul; three weeks ago he closed the school for three days because of IS shelling from the west.

Mosul education is “empty right now,” and students are returning with “bad in their hearts and their minds” after the IS experience, says Jalili. For 1,100 students, he so far has received just 50 English books and 250 Arabic grammar and 250 literature books from the Iraqi Ministry of Education.

“If I give one grammar to Abdul, I give one literature book to Mohamed,” he laments.

The fact that western Mosul is still largely in IS hands makes everything uncertain. One bright light is the hundreds of education kits that arrived from UNICEF with notebooks, pens, and paper.

First in line to collect his, ahead of a gaggle of noisy young men, is Omar Ahmad, a tall and slight 21-year-old.

“I never believed we would be back,” says the student, wearing a fashionable white sweater and a stylishly slicked back hairstyle. He says he doesn’t care that the windows are all broken, or that the buildings are in disrepair, because “it’s my future.”

He and his schoolmates recount tedious months trapped inside, to avoid IS enforcers or recruitment. They had books, and watched a lot of movies.

“It’s very difficult. You just couldn’t go out,” says Farouk Firas, a friend of Mr. Ahmad in the UNICEF supplies line. He spouts American-accented lines from US movies, and says being back in class “feels like hope.”

“We have this feeling of being left behind,” says Mr. Firas. “Psychologically, it’s hard to recover.”

“The worst is that we feel we lost our futures in the war,” adds Ahmad.

Reopening doors
Reopening the door to those futures is the aim of educators at the nearby primary school, who in many cases say they were forced to teach.

Before IS, as many as 500 students learned here. That number plummeted to 50 during jihadist rule, but has grown again to 650 to accommodate pupils from ruined schools. Boys’ classes are held in the morning; girls’ in the afternoon.

“All the parents were afraid to send their children,” says Montather Omar Mohamed, deputy director of the boys’ primary school, and a 32-year teaching veteran. The school opened in the mid-1970s and has produced many teachers, engineers, and doctors. Behind her desk, 20 framed certificates adorn the wall.

IS “changed all the program, about assault and killing. It was so extreme,” says Ms. Mohamed. In the science book, on page 53, for example, it explained how the body needs food for fuel, “to do a lot of things – pray, fasting and to conduct jihad.” The flimsy booklets were the first thing to go when IS was defeated.

Two doors away, the director of the girls’ primary school is surrounded by boxes of new textbooks from the Education Ministry, coveted items over which she keeps careful guard.

Iman Ghanem Mohamed recalls how IS forced her to reopen the school when it first took over, threatening to “punish” her if she did not.

Two thickly bearded IS fighters arrived in her office in 2014 – wearing what they call “Kandahari” dress with short trousers, favored by IS – to conduct an inspection.

They wanted her to take down the map of Iraq, because, they said, IS had removed the borders between Iraq and Syria. But they settled instead for simply covering the name “Iran” with a piece of tape, because the Shiite-majority nation of “infidels,” they said, did not exist.

Ms. Mohamed says she managed to get away with refusing constant demands to completely cover her face. But one item caught their attention above all – a small hand bell, rung every day at break times and at the end of class.

“They did not accept that bell, they thought it was a Christian thing,” recalls the school director, who was forced to hide it away for years of IS rule. “They said, ‘If I see this again, I will put you in jail.’”

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Midd...stern-Mosul-overflow-with-students-once-again

Evil will eventually always be destroyed. Fantastic news and God bless those children who have suffered too much.

 

[TheCamelGuy]

americans firing himars

 

[Hindustani78]

http://www.arabnews.com/node/1064906/middle-east
TAJI BASE: Iraqi soldiers maneuver sections of floating bridge on a muddy, man-made lake as American trainers instruct them in skills that have played a key role in the war against militants.

Members of the Iraqi Army’s Bridging Battalion who have completed the training are deployed in the area of Mosul, where government-led forces are fighting to retake Daesh’s last urban stronghold in the country.

Iraqi forces have deployed floating bridges on a number of occasions as they waged war against the militants in the “Land of the Two Rivers.” And floating bridges have a long history in Iraq, where boats were used to connect the two banks of the Tigris River at Baghdad from Abbasid times into the 20th century.

The Bridging Battalion “took part in a number of battles to support Iraqi forces in fighting (Daesh),” said Capt. Ali Raad, an officer in the unit.

They have been deployed “in Anbar and Salaheddin provinces, and now in the battle of Mosul,” Raad said, referring to provinces where three of the battles to retake cities from Daesh took place.

Iraqi forces in Mosul now face a major challenge: All of the bridges across the Tigris, which divides the city into its eastern and western sides, have been damaged or destroyed.

When Daesh still controlled territory in east Mosul, having the bridges out of commission hampered militant activities.

But Iraqi forces have now retaken all of eastern Mosul, and have secured one bridgehead on the western side and are advancing toward another, meaning it is now in their interest to reconnect them.

In the course of the training, the soldiers learn to “drive the combat bridge transporters, operate the boats, as well as construct the assault float bridge,” said Staff Sgt. Michael McConaughey, a US soldier.

This exercise is overseen by American soldiers, but British troops are also conducting similar training at another site.
“There are currently about 90 (Iraqi soldiers) that are already trained and proficient, and with the addition of these 25, (there will) be over 100 ready to go complete bridge missions,” McConaughey said.

The bridge can hold “up to a tank on the back of a truck that’s on a trailer — it can cross the heaviest vehicle we have,” he said.

The utility of bridges that can be quickly established by the military became apparent fairly early in the conflict with Daesh, which overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014.

Daesh used a bus bomb and an explosives-rigged boat to destroy two bridges leading to Dhuluiyah, a town north of Baghdad where tribesmen held out against the militants in one neighborhood for months that year.

*************

http://www.arabnews.com/node/1064991/middle-east

MOSUL: Iraqi forces on Tuesday recaptured the main government building in Mosul, the central bank branch and the museum where three years ago the militants filmed themselves destroying priceless statues.

A Rapid Response team stormed the Nineveh governorate complex in an overnight raid that lasted more than an hour, killing dozens of Daesh fighters, spokesman Lt. Col. Abdel Amir Al-Mohammadawi said.

The buildings, already in ruins, were not being used by Daesh, but their capture is a landmark in the push to retake the militants’ last major stronghold in Iraq, now restricted to the heavy populated western half of Mosul.

Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi flew into Mosul to visit the troops. “Iraqis shall walk tall when the war is over,” Al-Abadi said as he arrived.

Daesh snipers continued to fire at the main government building after it was stormed, restricting the movements of the soldiers, and forces pushing further into western Mosul came under rifle and rocket fire.

“The fighting is strong because most of them are foreigners and they have nowhere to go,” said the head of a sniper unit for the Rapid Response, Al-Moqdadi Al-Saeedi.

Some of Daesh’s foreign fighters are trying to flee Mosul, US Air Force Brig. Gen. Matthew Isler said.

“The game is up,” Isler said at the Qayyara West Airfield, south of the city. “They have lost this fight and what you’re seeing is a delaying action.”

The militants looted the central bank when they took over the city in 2014 and took videos of themselves destroying archaeological artifacts. Traffic in antiquities that abound in the territory under their control, from Palmyra in Syria to Nineveh in Iraq, was one of their main sources of income.

Authorities announced Tuesday that Iraqi forces had regained complete control of the west Mosul neighborhoods of Al-Dawasa, Al-Danadan and Tal Al-Ruman, bringing the total number of recaptured areas to 10.

In Al-Danadan, streets were left strewn with rubble and windows blown out of many houses.

“There were mortar rounds falling on us, they fell on the roof and in the courtyard,” said Manhal, a 28-year-old resident of the area.

 

[TheCamelGuy]

IS guy planting an IED killed himself by accident. Isn't that a hoot

https://twitter.com/x/status/839511492902928384

 

[Kuwaiti Girl]

IS guy planting an IED killed himself by accident. Isn't that a hoot

https://twitter.com/x/status/839511492902928384

One less Wahhabi-takfiri rodent. Good riddance to bad rubbish!

 

[TheCamelGuy]

https://twitter.com/x/status/839512407550619648