Islamic State (IS) fighters launched a counterattack against advancing US-backed Iraqi forces in western Mosul during an overnight rain storm as the battle for control of the militants’ last major urban stronghold in Iraq intensified.
Explosions and gunfire rang out across the city’s southwestern districts in the early hours of Thursday. The fighting eased in the late morning, although a reporter saw an airstrike and rebel mortar fire.
A senior Iraqi officer said Islamic State staged its attack on units from the elite Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service when the storm and strong winds hampered air surveillance and on-the-ground visibility.
He said some militant fighters hid among displaced families to get close to the US-trained troops.
Iraqi forces captured the eastern side of Mosul in January after 100 days of fighting and launched their attack on the districts that lie west of the Tigris River on Feb. 19.
Defeating the IS in Mosul would crush the Iraqi wing of the caliphate declared by the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in 2014, from Mosul’s grand old Nuri mosque.
Residents reported that civilians were killed in an airstrike on an IS-run mosque on Wednesday, highlighting the perilous situation facing hundreds of thousands of Mosul residents as the allied forces step up their campaign.
The residents said the blast collapsed or damaged a number of neighboring houses, many of which are badly made and poorly maintained.
A spokesman for the US-led coalition said he was not aware of an airstrike on the Omar al-Aswad mosque.
The mosque was where IS sent members of the Iraqi national police and armed forces to surrender their weapons and register in a militant database when the group seized control of the city in 2014.
In return they received a pass to prevent their arrest and possible execution at militant check points.
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