Iraqi and Kurdish forces backed by US-led airstrikes launched coordinated military operations early yesterday as the long-awaited fight to wrest the northern Iraqi city of Mosul from Islamic State fighters got under way.
However, the battle is likely to be long and it was unclear when the troops would enter the city itself.
The fate of more than 1 million civilians trapped inside Mosul will also be critical as the battle intensifies in the days and weeks ahead, amid concerns that the Islamic State could use them as human shields.
Photo: AFP
Convoys of Iraqi, Kurdish and US forces moved east of Mosul along the front line early yesterday as US-led coalition airstrikes sent plumes of smoke into the air and heavy artillery rounds rumbled in the distance.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the start of the operations on state TV, launching the country’s toughest battle since US troops left nearly five years ago.
Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, fell to the Islamic State in the summer of 2014, and weeks later the head of the militant group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, announced the formation of a self-styled “caliphate” from the pulpit of one of its mosques.
“These forces that are liberating you today, they have one goal in Mosul, which is to get rid of DAESH and to secure your dignity,” al-Abadi said, addressing the city’s residents and using the Arabic acronym for the group. “God willing, we shall win.”
If successful, the liberation of Mosul would be the biggest blow yet to the Islamic State.
Al-Abadi pledged that the fight for the city would lead to the liberation of all Iraqi territory from the militants this year.
In Washington, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter called the launch of the Mosul operation “a decisive moment in the campaign” to deliver a lasting defeat to the Islamic State.
Iraqi forces have for days been massing around Mosul, including elite special forces that are expected to lead the charge into the city, as well as Kurdish forces, Sunni tribal fighters, federal police and state-sanctioned Shiite militias.
South of Mosul, Iraqi military units are based at the sprawling Qayyarah Airfield West base, but to the city’s east, men are camped out in abandoned homes.
Kurdish forces are stationed to the north and east of Mosul, a mostly Sunni city that has been a center of insurgent activity and anti-government sentiment since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Iraqi officials have warned that the Mosul operation has been rushed before a political agreement has been set for how the city will be governed after it is retaken.
Lieutenant Colonel Amozhgar Taher of the Peshmerga said his men would only move to retake a cluster of mostly Christian and Shabak villages east of Mosul and would not enter the city itself due to their concern for “sectarian sensitivities.”
Taher spoke at a makeshift base in an abandoned house along the front line, about 30km east of Mosul.
Later yesterday, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said the Peshmerga have taken control of seven villages east of Mosul and that they control the main road linking the city with the Iraqi Kurdish regional capital, Erbil, further to the east.
Iraqi special forces Lieutenant Colonel Ali Hussein said the Kurdish forces are leading the first push on Mosul’s eastern front.
His men were anxious to move out to the front line, but he said he expects that they will wait near the town of Khazer for another day or two.
A suicide car bombing yesterday targeted security forces outside Baghdad, killing at least 12 people and wounding more than 30, officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the checkpoint attack in the town of Yusufiyah, 20km south of Baghdad, although it bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group.
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