Mosul battle: Iraqi Shi'ite commander says 'no picnic' as troops advance

Mon Oct 31, 2016 | 01H:23  GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Leila Mohamed and Biodun Iginla, BBC News and Reuters, Beirut

Iraqi troops and security forces edged closer to Mosul on two southern fronts on Sunday but a leader of the Shi'ite militias newly participating in the offensive warned that the battle for Islamic State's Iraq stronghold would be long and grueling.

A military statement said the army's Ninth Armoured Division raised the Iraqi flag in the village of Ali Rash, about 7 km (4 miles) southeast of Mosul, after recapturing it from the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim militants.

Further south, an Interior Ministry officer said security forces were advancing from the town of al-Shura, recaptured from Islamic State (IS) on Saturday, along the Tigris river valley towards Mosul 30 km (20 miles) to the north.

The army and security forces, along with Kurdish peshmerga fighters, have been backed by U.S.-led air and ground support in their two-week-old campaign to crush Islamic State in the largest city of its self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

Their battle for Mosul, still home to 1.5 million residents, could be one of the toughest in a decade of turmoil since the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, brought Iraq's majority Shi'ites to power.

On Saturday thousands of Iranian-backed Iraqi Shi'ite militia fighters, known as the Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) forces, joined the Mosul offensive, launching a campaign to take territory to the west of the city.

Their target is to seize the town of Tal Afar, 55 km (35 miles) west of Mosul, from Islamic State.

That would cut off any chance of the jihadists retreating into - or being reinforced from - their positions in neighboring Syria, Ahmed al-Asadi, a spokesman of the Popular Mobilisation, told a news conference. IS fighters have been "flowing into Mosul" from Syria, he added.

Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga fighters are already driving Islamic State fighters back on the southern, eastern and northeastern approaches to Mosul.

"There is cooperation between ... the army, federal police, Hashid and counter-terrorism (forces) and also the (local Sunni) tribes," said Hadi al-Amiri, head of the Badr Organisation, the most powerful group within the Popular Mobilisation forces.

Speaking in the village of Ain Nasir in the semi-arid land west of the Tigris, Amiri said the fight against Islamic State insurgents holding Mosul, who have already launched waves of suicide car bombs, roadside bombs and sniper attacks to slow down the advancing forces, could be long and bloody.

"The battle of Mosul will not be a picnic. It needs time, it needs precision, it needs a deep breath," he said, wearing military fatigues and with his face wrapped in a white checked headscarf against the wind and sand.

"We are prepared for the battle of Mosul even if it lasts for months".

ISLAMIC STATE "REINFORCING" TAL AFAR

The deployment of Shi'ite forces in northern Iraq, an ethnically mixed region where Sunni Muslims form a majority, could inflame sectarian tensions and has led to warnings from neighboring Turkey.

President Tayyip Erdogan said the town of Tal Afar, which the Shi'ite forces say they will recapture, is Turkmen - inhabited by people with strong cultural and historical links to Turkey - and said Ankara would act if the Popular Mobilisation forces "unleash terror" there.

Anticipating the offensive on Tal Afar, and highlighting its strategic importance, Islamic State has also been reinforcing the town in the last 48 hours, an Iraqi security official said.

He said two waves of reinforcements were sent including insurgents who had fought in neighboring Syria and had experience in using anti-tank missiles.

"Intelligence reports show that the Daesh (Islamic State) groups have entered TOW missiles systems into Tal Afar. It's obvious they are making preparations for a long protracted battle," the official from the provincial military operation command center told us at Reuters.

His comments could not be independently verified but a resident of Mosul, speaking to us at Reuters by phone, said relatives in Tal Afar reported seeing increasing numbers of Islamic State fighters in the town, some of them patrolling on motorbikes.

Since launching their advance towards Tal Afar on Saturday, the Popular Mobilisation forces have taken over several villages in an area about 60 km (40 miles) southeast of their final target.

The Kurdish Peshmerga said in a statement on Sunday they had cleared at least 28 villages north and east of Mosul since the start of the offensive.

Interior Ministry rapid response forces, who took control on Saturday of the town of al-Shura, about 30 km (20 miles) south of Mosul, advanced on Sunday a few km northeast and took three villages from Islamic State, an officer told Reuters.

The Popular Mobilisation force, formed in 2014 to help push back Islamic State's sweeping advance, officially report to Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi's Shi'ite-led government, but has very close links to Iran.

Human rights groups have warned of possible sectarian violence if the Shi'ite paramilitaries seize areas where Sunni Muslims form a majority, which is the case in much of northern and western Iraq.

Elite unit of the Iraqi army waits for U.S.-backed forces to close in on Islamic State in Mosul

Wed Oct 26, 2016 |   03H:50 GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Nasra Ismail and Biodun Iginla, BBC News and Reuters, Beirut

An elite unit of the Iraqi army paused its week-long advance on Mosul as it approached the city's eastern edge on Tuesday, waiting for other U.S.-backed forces to close in on Islamic State's last major urban stronghold in Iraq.

On the ninth day of the offensive on Mosul, government forces and allied Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are still fighting their way towards the outer limits of the northern city, in the early stages of an assault which could become the biggest military operation in Iraq in over a decade.

The first force to get near to Mosul, advancing to within two kilometers (just over a mile) of Iraq's second largest city, was the elite U.S.-trained Counter Terrorism Service (CTS).

CTS troops have moved in from the east, dislodging Islamic State from a Christian region that has been empty of residents since the ultra-hardline Sunni militants took it over in 2014.

The combat ahead is likely to be more difficult and deadly because of the presence of civilians. Some 1.5 million residents remain in the city and worst-case forecasts see up to a million being uprooted, according to the United Nations.

U.N. aid agencies said the fighting has so far forced about 9,000 to flee their homes. But Lise Grande, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, told Reuters that the United Nations expects a mass exodus from Mosul, perhaps within the next few days.

In the worst case scenario, Grande said it was also possible that Islamic State fighters who have controlled Mosul for more than two years could resort to "rudimentary chemical weapons" to hold back the impending assault.

U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said Islamic State fighters have reportedly killed scores of people around Mosul in the last week.

Colville said that security forces discovered the bodies of 70 civilians in houses in Tuloul Naser village south of Mosul last Thursday. Islamic State also reportedly killed 50 former police officers outside Mosul on Sunday, he said.

90 VILLAGES RETAKEN

The Mosul campaign, which may become the biggest battle yet in the 13 years of turmoil unleashed by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, aims to crush the Iraqi half of Islamic State's declared caliphate in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

Washington has fewer allies on the ground in Syria, where it has supported rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad, but Defense Secretary Ash Carter signaled on Tuesday that the fight against Islamic State there may be stepped up, saying he expected the campaigns against the jihadists in Mosul and the Syrian city of Raqqa to overlap.

In Iraq, a commander said the CTS advance on Mosul was pausing to allow other military units to make similar progress and consolidate the front before pushing further into the city.

The Iraqi force attacking Mosul is 30,000-strong, supported by U.S. special forces and under American, French and British air cover. The number of insurgents dug in the city is estimated at 5,000 to 6,000 by the Iraqi military.

About 90 Islamic State-held villages and towns around Mosul have been retaken so far into the offensive, according to statements from the army. The distance from the frontlines to the city ranges from just a couple of kilometers in the east, to 30 kilometers (nearly 20 miles) in the south.

In Khazna, one of the villages recaptured on Monday by the CTS, some of the fighting appeared to have gone from house to house, leaving smoked out buildings with their contents turned upside down, a Reuters correspondent said. A disabled Humvee and the remnants of a car bomb could be seen on a desert path.

CTS snipers hid on rooftops at the edge of village keeping watch over the desert areas extending to Mosul.

Although CTS is a government unit, many of its Humvees fly the Shi'ite flags of Iraq's majority community. Such a display could antagonize Sunnis who make up most of the population in Nineveh province around Mosul.

BATTLE FOR DESERT TOWN

Seeking to relieve pressure on their forces controlling the northern Iraqi city, Islamic State fighters who have waged counter attacks across the country battled Iraqi troops in the desert town of Rutba, 450 km (280 miles) to the southwest.

Islamic State attacked Rutba on Sunday, and has been fighting since then for the town, which lies on the main highway running west from Baghdad, close to the borders with Jordan and Syria.

The militants expanded the area of Rutba under their control from a third to about half Monday overnight, forcing the government to send reinforcements.

Anbar province, where Rutba is located, has been a hotbed of Sunni insurgency against the Shi'ite-led government and the U.S. forces that overthrew former president Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, in 2003.

The Islamic State attack on Rutba came after an assault on the Kurdish-held oil city of Kirkuk last week, which prompted local authorities to start expelling Sunni Arabs over fears there could be Islamic State sleeper cells in their midst.

Hundreds of displaced Sunni Arab families who had been sheltering in the Kirkuk province from the conflict with Islamic State began moving out after authorities told them on Sunday to leave or face being forcibly expelled, humanitarian workers and residents said on Tuesday.

"The United Nations is very concerned about any action that could be understood as collective punishment," the UN's Grande said, adding that she was worried that the move could also set a precedent in a region riven with ethnic and sectarian divisions.

About 330,000 Sunni Arabs have taken refuge in the oil-rich Kirkuk province in the last two years, after Islamic State swept through northern, central and western Iraq in 2014.

Islamic State fighters stormed police stations and buildings in Kirkuk on Friday, killing about 100 security force members and civilians. Sixty-three militants also died in the heavy fighting that lasted until Sunday, when authorities restored control.

The militants are suspected to have come from Hawija, a pocket still under their control west of Kirkuk, but authorities also suspect that they were assisted by sleeper cells hiding among the displaced people or even by Sunni Arab residents.

Kirkuk is the most disputed area of Iraq because of its complex population mix. The Kurds took full control of the province in 2014 after Islamic State overran much of the north of the country and several divisions of the Iraqi army disintegrated.

Map showing Islamic State counter-attacks across Iraq

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