Jihadists with the Islamic State group were shaving their beards and changing hideouts in Mosul, residents said, as a major Iraqi offensive moved ever closer to the city on Wednesday.
With pressure building on the 10th day of the Mosul assault, Western defense chiefs were already looking ahead to the next target — Islamic State’s other major stronghold of Raqa in Syria.
Advances on the eastern front have brought elite Iraqi forces to within 5km of Mosul and residents said the jihadists seemed to be preparing for an assault on the city itself.
Photo: Reuters
“I saw some Daesh [Islamic State] members and they looked completely different from the last time I saw them,” eastern Mosul resident Abu Saif said.
“They had trimmed their beards and changed their clothes,” the former businessman said. “They must be scared ... they are also probably preparing to escape the city.”
Residents and military officials said many Islamic State fighters had relocated within Mosul, moving from the east to their traditional bastions on the western bank of the Tigris River, closer to escape routes to Syria.
The sounds of fighting on the northern and eastern fronts of the Mosul offensive could be heard inside the city, residents said, and US-led coalition aircraft were flying lower over it than usual.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi fighters have been advancing on Mosul from the south, east and north after an offensive was launched on Monday last week to retake the last major Iraqi city under Islamic State control.
The assault is backed by air and ground support from the US-led coalition — which also includes Britain and France — which launched a campaign against Islamic State two years ago.
Iraqi federal forces, allied with Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, have taken a string of towns and villages in a cautious, but steady advance over the past week in the face of shelling, sniper fire and suicide car bombings.
About 3,000 to 5,000 Islamic State fighters are believed to be inside Mosul, Iraq’s second city, alongside more than 1 million trapped civilians.
With the noose tightening on Mosul, officials from the 60-nation coalition have increasingly pointed to the next phase of the fight.
Both US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and British Secretary of State for Defence Michael Fallon said on Wednesday they expected an offensive on Raqa to be launched within weeks.
“That has long been our plan and we will be capable of resourcing both,” Carter told NBC News before arriving in Brussels for a two-day meeting of NATO defense chiefs.
If Mosul falls, Raqa would be the only major city in either Syria or Iraq under Islamic State control, the vestige of a cross-border “caliphate” the jihadists declared after seizing large parts of both nations in mid-2014.
However, an offensive against Raqa is likely to be far more complicated than the assault on Mosul — unlike in Iraq, the coalition does not have a strong ally on the ground in Syria.
US President Barack Obama spoke on Wednesday by telephone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the White House said in a statement, urging “close coordination” between the two nations to “apply sustained pressure on ISIL [Islamic State] in Syria to reduce threats to the United States, Turkey and elsewhere.”
Syria’s five-year civil war has left the nation in chaos, with Islamic State, US-backed rebels, Syrian Kurds and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces all engaged on multiple fronts.
Aid workers have warned of a major potential humanitarian crisis once fighting begins inside Mosul itself and civilians were already leaving in growing numbers.
An Iraqi minister said on Wednesday that more than 3,300 fleeing civilians had sought help from the government the previous day, the most in a single day.
There was “a big wave of displaced people ... the greatest number since the start of the military operation,” Iraqi Displacement and Migration Minister Jassem Mohammed al-Jaff said.
The number of people who fled their homes since the start of the offensive has topped 10,000, the UN said late on Wednesday.
The fighting has taken place in sparsely populated areas so far and while the numbers have been growing more rapidly this week, they are still a fraction of the huge displacement aid workers expect to occur.
At a camp near Khazir, the number of displaced people being bused in was higher than usual.
“We’re definitely better off here. We were being bombarded from all sides, by aircraft and tanks,” said a man who fled the village of Bazwaya and gave his name as Abu Ahmad.
The families joined a camp of hundreds of dust-covered blue and white tents, as scores of aid workers distributed mattresses, blankets, food and water bottles.
Aid workers fears they will be overwhelmed when the million-plus people believed to still be trapped in Mosul find a way out.
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