Baghdad — Iraqi forces led by federal police units retook several villages south of Mosul as part of a fresh push on the city’s west bank Sunday, a top commander said.
Army Staff Lt. Gen. Abdulamir Yarallah said in a statement that forces advancing toward Mosul airport retook Athbah and Al-Lazzagah, reviving a four-month-old offensive that was paused following the reconquest last month of the city’s east bank.
The southern front in the Mosul offensive had remained largely stagnant for weeks as the forces deployed there waited for the completion of operations on the city’s east bank.
The two villages and neighboring areas that federal police and the interior ministry’s elite Rapid Response forces retook on Sunday are the last before Mosul airport.
The airport and a nearby military base mark the southern approach to Mosul, on the east bank of the Tigris River that divides the city.
Elite fighting units are expected to attempt a foray into the city’s western side in the coming days.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi earlier on Sunday announced the formal start of the ground offensive on western Mosul, asking the Iraqi forces to ‹‘respect human rights’’ during the battle.
“Mosul would be a tough fight for any army in the world,” the commander of the US-led coalitions forces, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, said in a statement.
Iraqi planes dropped millions of leaflets on the western side of Mosul warning residents that the battle to dislodge Daesh (the so-called IS) was imminent as troops began moving in their direction, the Iraqi Defence Ministry said on Saturday.
The Joint Operations Command coordinating the fight against IS declared east Mosul “fully liberated” on January 24.
But it took Iraq’s most seasoned forces — the elite Counter-Terrorism Service — more than two months to clear the eastern side of Mosul.
After a pause, federal forces now face what was always billed as the toughest nut to crack: Mosul’s west bank, home to the narrow streets of the Old City.
“West Mosul had the potential certainly of being more difficult, with house-to-house fighting on a larger and more bloody scale,” said Patrick Skinner, from the Soufan Group intelligence consultancy.
The streets around the historical center, which includes the mosque in which Baghdadi made his only public appearance in June 2014, will be impassable for many military vehicles and force government fighters to take on IS in perilous dismounted warfare.
“IS resistance could be greater in this area and it will be harder, but all the more important, to completely clear the networks from Mosul after its recapture,” said Emily Anagnostos, Iraq analyst at the Institute for the Study of War.
While the federal forces’ attrition is said to be high, IS’s had been undoubtedly higher and commanders have said the jihadists may no longer have the resources to defend east Mosul effectively. Recent incidents in the recaptured east point to the difficulty of ensuring remnants of IS have not blended in with the civilian population in a huge city which most residents did not flee ahead of the government offensive.
Aid organizations had feared an exodus of unprecedented proportions before the start of the Mosul operation but half a million — a significant majority — of residents stayed home.
Their continued presence prevented both sides from resorting to deadlier weaponry, which may have slowed down the battle but averted a potentially much more serious humanitarian emergency in the middle of winter as well as more extensive material damage to the city.
“Mosul is going better than we expected, but there are serious dangers ahead,” Lise Grande, UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, told AFP.
Residents of west Mosul have reported very difficult living conditions and warned that they were already low on food, with weeks of fighting expected to lie ahead.
IS fighters and Mosul residents remained able to move across both sides of the city during much of the fighting in the east but all bridges across the Tigris have now been dropped and the jihadists in the west are all but besieged.
IS has used civilians as human shields as part of its defense tactics and killed residents attempting to flee, making it both difficult and dangerous for the population to escape.
While specialized units may attempt to throw pontoon bridges across the river to attack from the east, the main initial assault of the upcoming phase in the Mosul is expected to come from the south on the city’s airport. — Agencies
