Countdown begins to Islamic State “Daesh” collapse in Iraq’s Mosul

July 8, 2017 By administrator

Islamic State Daesh is on its last legs as Iraqi forces are expected to win back full control of the city of Mosul, the Takfiri terrorist group’s last urban stronghold in the Arab country in the next few hours.

“We are seeing now the last meters and then final victory will be announced,” Iraq’s state TV reported on Saturday. “It’s a matter of hours.”

Fighting currently rages on in Mosul’s densely-populated Old City, where Daesh elements have put up stiff resistance in the face of advancing Iraqi army soldiers and allied fighters.

Iraq’s state TV quoted a military spokesman as saying that the militants’ defense lines were collapsing.

Reports coming out of the city say Daesh terrorists are reported to be fighting for each meter with bombers, snipers and grenades, forcing Iraqi security forces to fight house-to-house in the Old city.

“They (terrorists) never surrender. Old Mosul will be their graveyard,” said Iraqi General Abdel Ghani al-Assadi, a commander in Iraq’s elite Counter Terrorism Service.

Another commander, Lieutenant Colonel Haider Hussein, also confirmed that the militants have resorted to bombers in the last areas where they are entrenched.

Sometimes with their families, he said, “they wait in the houses, and when our forces enter, they open fire or blow themselves up.”

Meanwhile, Iraqi commanders estimated that foreigners make up more than three quarters of the remaining Takfiris in Mosul.

“Most of them come from countries such as Algeria, Morocco or Tunisia,” said General Abbas al-Jabouri, a commander of the police Rapid Response force.

Separately on Saturday, Arabic-language al-Sumaria television network, said 35 Daesh elements, who had fled the Old City and were trying to infiltrate into the city’s east, were killed and six others were arrested.

On Friday, an Iraqi federal police officer said clashes left 83 terrorists dead in the same region.

Three Daesh bases were destroyed and a bomb manufacturing factory and a tunnel were uncovered, he added.

Mosul fell to Daesh in 2014, when the terror outfit began its campaign of death and destruction in Iraq.

The Iraqi army soldiers and allied volunteer fighters have been leading the Mosul liberation operation since October 2016. They took control of eastern Mosul in January and launched the battle in the west in February.

The battle for Mosul has already displaced 90,000 people, about half the city’s pre-war population, according to aid organizations.

Islamic State “Daesh” shave their faces en masse to flee Mosul’s Old City

July 5, 2017 By administrator

Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) forces stand guard next to Mosul’s destroyed ancient leaning minaret, known as the “Hadba” (Hunchback), in the Old City of Mosul on July 4, 2017, during the ongoing offensive to retake the city from Takfiri Daesh terrorists. (Photo by AFP)

A high-ranking Iraqi military commander says members of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group are shaving their beards to blend in with civilians as they flee government forces’ advance on Mosul’s Old City.

“They just shave their beards and walk out. Just yesterday we captured two among a group of women and children,” Lieutenant General Sami al-Aridi of Special Forces told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

He added that hundreds of militants have managed to escape from the Old City, noting that some 300 Daesh extremists remain in the small patch of territory still controlled by them.

The remarks came on the same day that Staff Lieutenant General Abdulwahab al-Saadi, a top commander in Iraq’s Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), told Arabic-language al-Forat news agency that Daesh terrorists’ hold on Mosul has shrunk to a 150-square meter area.

He went on to say that there are 100 bombers among the militants remaining in Mosul’s Old City, stressing that 90 percent of the remaining terrorists are foreigners.

Major Ali Mohsen, a member of the CTS, also told Basnews news agency that government forces have taken over 90 percent of al-Midan neighborhood, where Daesh terrorists were running underground detention facilities and stockpiling munitions.

He added that security forces have uncovered an incarceration center, where 40 people were being held in poor and unhealthy conditions.

On Tuesday, security forces liberated the main square and a multi-storey car park in the Bab al-Toub neighborhood of western Mosul and Khuzam Grand Mosque.

They also took control of the Khalid ibn al-Walid street in the Old City of Mosul.

Late on Tuesday, Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi congratulated the armed forces on a “big victory” in Mosul, declaring an end to Daesh terror group’s self-styled caliphate.

Iraqi army soldiers and volunteer fighters from the Popular Mobilization Units, commonly known by their Arabic name, Hashd al-Sha’abi, have made sweeping gains against Daesh since launching the Mosul operation on October 17, 2016.

The Iraqi forces took control of eastern Mosul in January after 100 days of fighting, and launched the battle in the west on February 19.

An estimated 862,000 people have been displaced from Mosul ever since the battle to retake the city began nine months ago. A total of 195,000 civilians have also returned, mainly to the liberated areas of eastern Mosul.

Iraqi forces recapture iconic Nuri Mosque in Old Mosul

June 29, 2017 By administrator

The Iraqi army has recaptured the venue of the iconic Grand al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul, with the country’s state TV implying the liberation of the city, which has been under Daesh control since 2014.

“Their fictitious state has fallen,” an Iraqi military spokesman, Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, told state TV on Thursday.

Earlier, the Iraqi military announced the news as it continues to gain more advances in Mosul’s Old City.

Shortly after the announcement, the Iraqi state television reported the fall of the “mythical state,” in reference to Daesh’s so-called caliphate.

The TV said the recapture of the mosque means Mosul, as the terror group’s command center, has been liberated, while Iraqi forces are in the middle of a mop-up operation to cleanse the city of remaining Daesh elements.

Daesh extremists late on June 21 blew up the Grand al-Nuri Mosque and its Hadba (Hunchback) minaret.

Iraqi authorities and officials from the US-led coalition purportedly fighting Daesh terrorists said the destruction of the site, sometimes referred to as Iraq’s Tower of Pisa, is a sign of the extremists’ imminent loss of Mosul.

The Iraqi army forces have besieged the last Daesh positions in the southern areas of Old Mosul and they expect to purge the area of the terrorists by the next few days.

The combined pictures created by AFP on June 22, 2017 shows Nuri Mosque’s leaning Al-Hadba minaret before and after it was destroyed by Daesh Takfiri terrorists on June 21, 2017.

Iraqi government forces are nearing the end of their eight-month campaign to capture the de-facto capital of Daesh in Iraq.

The media bureau of the Iraqi Joint Operations Command announced in a statement on Wednesday that army troopers had established full control over Hadarat al-Saada and al-Ahmadiyya neighborhoods northwest of Grand al-Nuri Mosque, where purported Daesh ringleader Ibrahim al-Samarrai aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the formation of the group’s so-called caliphate back in 2014.

Earlier on Wednesday, Federal Police Forces Commander Lieutenant General Shaker Jawdat said security forces were moving through al-Farouq district and advancing towards Bab al-Toub, Serjkhana, Bab al-Jadid and Bab al-Lakash areas in the heart of Mosul’s Old City.

He revealed that government troops were in control of more than 70 percent of Daesh’s last bastion in Mosul.

Jawdat noted that army troops were engaged in fierce battles with an estimated 300 Daesh militants in the Old City.

Iraqi forces seize more ground

Reports coming out of Mosul say Daesh terrorists have been using Mosul residents as human shields. The militants force women and children to cover them in the streets as they know that Iraqi security forces will not target civilians

Moreover, when the terrorists lose a region, they use human shields to secure their way out of the area.

The Iraqi forces took control of eastern Mosul in January after 100 days of fighting, and launched the battle in the west on February 19.

Hundreds of civilians flee Mosul as IS loses grip on city

June 25, 2017 By administrator

mosul flee isis Iraqi forces are creating safe passage routes for civilians trapped by IS by dividing the militant group’s territory. Despite that effort, the UN said civilians under IS occupation face “almost unimaginable” danger.

The Iraqi army opened escape routes Saturday for hundreds of civilians trapped by fighting with “Islamic State” (IS) militants in Mosul’s Old City.

IS appears to be mounting a last stand in what was once the self-declared capital of its self-styled “caliphate.”

The Iraqi forces, trained in urban warfare by the US military, were channeling their attack along two perpendicular streets that come together in the center of the Old City. Their aim is to isolate the militants into four pockets.

Despite that effort, the United Nations issued an alarming warning Saturday that local civilians are in grave danger, claiming 12 were killed and hundreds injured Friday.

“Fighting is very intense in the Old City and civilians are at extreme, almost unimaginable risk. There are reports that thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of people are being held as human shields [by Islamic State],” Lise Grande, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, said in a statement. “Hundreds of civilians, including children, are being shot.”

Iraqi officials are hoping to declare victory in the crucial city in the coming days, to coincide with the Muslim Eid holiday, which marks the end of Ramadan.

Fleeing to safety

Helicopter gunships were providing air support for the Iraqi ground troops, firing on jihadi emplacements in the Old City.

Hundreds of civilians took advantage of the safe corridors to flee to the safety of the government-held parts of Mosul, west of the Old City. At least 100 civilians reached safety during one 20-minute period on Saturday.

Some were injured and carrying malnourished children. “My baby only had bread and water for the past eight days,” one mother said.

Iraqis fleeing the Old City of Mosul But more than 100,000 people, of whom half are thought to be

children, remain trapped in IS territory, which is now less than 2 square kilometers (1.2 square miles).

Journalists killed

A land mine claimed the lives of three journalists in Mosul this week. Veteran French war correspondent Veronique Robert, 54, who was wounded in the land mine blast that killed two of her colleagues in Mosul earlier this week, has died of her injuries, her employers France Televisions announced Saturday.

She was working on a story with her French colleague Stephan Villeneuve, 48, and Iraqi Kurdish reporter Bakhtiyar Addad, 41, when the land mine exploded on Monday, killing Villeneuve and Addad almost immediately.

A fourth journalist with them, Samuel Forey, suffered light injuries.

The fall of Mosul would essentially end the Iraqi half of the IS “caliphate” as a quasi-state structure. But the militants would still hold sizable tracts of mostly rural territory in both Iraq and Syria.

It was in Mosul in the summer of 2014 that IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced himself to the world for the first time as the “caliph,” or ruler of all Muslims. Mosul’s population at the time was more than 2 million.

Raqqa, the IS’ so-called capital in Syria, is also under siege by a US-backed Kurdish coalition. It is thought to be only a matter of time before the jihadis lose their grip there as well.

bik/sms (Reuters, dpa, AFP, AP)

IS’s Destruction Of Mosul’s Grand Mosque Called ‘Declaration Of Defeat’

June 21, 2017 By administrator

The famous leaning “hunchback” minaret of the Grand Al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul.

Islamic State extremists on June 21 blew up Mosul’s Grand Al-Nuri Mosque and its iconic leaning minaret in what the leader of Iraq called “an official declaration of defeat.”

The mosque, built in 1172, and its minaret known as “the hunchback” were chosen as the venue where IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in July 2014 declared himself “caliph” of what he hoped would be a militant empire growing out of Iraq and Syria.

His black flag had flown over the mosque’s famous minaret for three years, and its destruction now marks the group’s concession that it is near defeat, Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi said afterwards.

Before the blast, Iraqi forces had encircled IS’s stronghold in the Old City, the last district under the militants’ control in Mosul,and had been making slow but steady progress toward retaking control of the heavily populated area.

U.S. Army Major General Joseph Martin, a senior U.S. commander in the battle against IS, called the mosque’s devastation “a crime against the people of Mosul and all of Iraq” and “an example of why this brutal organization must be annihilated.”

Iraq’s military said the militants blew up the mosque as Iraqi forces were advancing toward targets deep in the Old City and got to within 50 meters of the mosque. It called the move a “historical crime.”

The destruction of two of Mosul’s best-known landmarks adds to a long list of world heritage sites the militants have destroyed in Iraq and Syria, including dozens of sites in Mosul and many of Palmyra’s famed monuments.

IS militants who seized control of Mosul in June 2014 had previously targeted the minaret, which Iraqis lovingly called Al-Hadba, or “the hunchback,” because it listed like the leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy.

But residents of Mosul protected the mosque at that time by creating a human chain around it.

Iraqi officials had privately expressed the hope that the mosque could be captured in time for Eid al-Fitr, the festival marking the end of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month. The first day of the Eid falls this year on June 25 or 26 in Iraq.

But because of the mosque’s close association with Baghdadi’s attempt at establishing a caliphate, Mosul residents told reporters they feared it would be targeted if the group ever were on the verge of losing control over the city.

IS’s Amaq news site claimed after the blast that the mosque was destroyed by a U.S. air strike, but that claim was quickly denied by the anti-IS coalition, which said no strikes were carried out in the area on June 21.

The mosque was named after Nuruddin al-Zanki, a nobleman who fought the early crusaders from a fiefdom that covered territory in modern-day Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.

It was built with seven bands of decorative brickwork in complex geometric patterns ascending in levels towards the top, similar to designs found in Persia and Central Asia.

The minaret started listing centuries ago and was long considered an endangered monument.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, and dpa

Iraqi Kurdish and French journalists killed in Mosul

June 20, 2017 By administrator

raqi Kurdish Bakhtiyar Haddad (L) and French journalist Stephan Villeneuve killed by Islamic State mine in Mosul June 19, 2017. Photo: Ekurd.net/FB/Linkenin

MOSUL,— An Iraqi Kurdish journalist and a French journalist were killed and two other French reporters were wounded after a mine exploded in Mosul, where they were covering an advance by Iraqi forces against Islamic State militants, French media reported on Monday.

The television network said Iraqi Kurdish journalist Bakhtiyar Haddad was killed and three reporters, Veronique Robert and Stephane Villeneuve, were wounded and taken to a U.S. military hospital in northern Iraq.

Stephan Villeneuve later succumbed to his injuries, public broadcaster France Televisions said Tuesday.

Local Kurdish media had earlier reported the incident saying the French journalists were being treated at the U.S. base in the Iraqi town of Qayyara.

Islamic State fighters have been defending their remaining stronghold in the Old City of Mosul, moving stealthily along narrow back alleys as U.S.-backed Iraqi forces slowly advance.

The historic district, and a tiny area to its north, are the only parts of the city still under the militants’ control. Mosul used to be the Iraqi capital of the group, also known as ISIS.

On February 25, journalist and presenter for Kurdish Rudaw TV Shifa Gerdi was also killed as she was covering the Mosul operation.

(With files from Reuters | AFP | NRT)

In Mosul, journey to hell

June 4, 2017 By administrator

photographer Antoine Agoudjian

By Antoine Agoudjian

REPORT – For one month, photographer Antoine Agoudjian accompanied the Iraqi soldiers in the front line against the Daech fighters. He brings back images that bear witness to the brutality of the clashes to retake the neighborhood still in the hands of the executioners of the Islamic state.

Mosul

We had been stuck for several hours already, like a mousetrap. In our ears whistled the shrill sound of the snipers firing positioned in the alleys facing us. That day again, no helicopters in the sky to support our advance in the narrow alleys of Mosul-West. A few days earlier, Daech’s men, who have been holding the city since 2014, managed to shoot down a plane, and the pilots refused to fly in bad weather. We were alone. “

On the front line, a Humvee (armored vehicle equipped with a machine gun), harassed by sniper fire, headed for the combat zone. Photo credits: ANTOINE AGOUDJIAN

In the midst of this deluge, frozen with blood and dust, leaden by the dull and foolish sound of war, Antoine …

Source: http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2017/06/02/01003-20170602ARTFIG00050–mossoul-voyage-au-bout-de-l-enfer.php

Mosul: ISIS fighters seal off Mosul mosque preparing for last stand

June 1, 2017 By administrator

Islamic State militants have closed the streets around Mosul‘s Grand al-Nuri Mosque, residents said, apparently in preparation for a final showdown in the battle over their last major stronghold in Iraq, Reuters said.

Dozens of fighters were seen by residents taking up positions in the past 48 hours around the medieval mosque, the site where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared an Islamist caliphate in July 2014.

Islamic State’s black flag has been flying from the mosque since the militants captured Mosul and seized swathes of Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014.

U.S.-backed Iraqi government forces retook eastern Mosul in January and began a new push on Saturday to capture the group’s remaining enclave in western Mosul, comprising of the Old City center where the mosque is located, and three adjacent districts alongside the western bank of the River Tigris.

The fall of the city would, in effect, mark the end of the Iraqi half of the self-styled caliphate. Meanwhile in Syria, Kurdish forces backed by U.S.-air strikes are besieging Islamic State forces in the city of Raqqa, the militants’ de facto capital in that country.

Mosul to be totally freed from Daesh grip in May: Cmdr.

April 30, 2017 By administrator

A high-ranking Iraqi military commander has expressed hope that government forces, backed by volunteer fighters from Popular Mobilization Units, will drive the Daesh Takfiri terrorists out of their last urban stronghold in the country in less than a month despite the stiff resistance that the extremists are putting up in the densely-populated Old City district of western Mosul.

The official al-Sabaah (The Morning) daily newspaper, quoting Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Othman al-Ghanimi, reported on Sunday that the battle should be completed “in a maximum of three weeks.”

The report came on the same day that the commander of Nineveh Liberation Operation, Lieutenant General Abdul Amir Yarallah, said fighters from Popular Mobilization Units, commonly known by their Arabic name, Hashd al-Sha’abi, had reclaimed control of the villages of Tomit, Bont al- Mosheirfeh and Umm al-Shatan west of Tel Abtah, and raised the national Iraqi flags over several buildings in the liberated areas.

Yarallah added that pro-government Iraqi forces had inflicted heavy losses on Daesh ranks and their military hardware during the operations.

Separately, two Iraqi soldiers were killed and eight others injured when Daesh militants launched an ambush attack against an army outpost in the troubled western province of Anbar.

Captain Ahmed al-Dulaimi of the provincial police said the attack targeted government forces west of the town of Ar-Rutbah, situated about 428 kilometers (265 miles) west of the capital, Baghdad, on Sunday.

He said five of the assailants were shot dead, adding that fierce exchanges of gunfire broke out between both sides after the ambush.

The United Nations says nearly half a million civilians have fled fighting since the offensive to retake Mosul from the Daesh terrorists started on October 17, 2016.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on April 17 that 493,000 people had been displaced from the city, located some 400 kilometers north of the capital Baghdad.

As many as 500,000 civilians are still trapped in Daesh-controlled neighborhoods of western Mosul.

Iraqi army soldiers and Hashd al-Sha’abi fighters have made sweeping gains against the Takfiri elements since launching the operation to retake Mosul.

The Iraqi forces took control of eastern Mosul in January after 100 days of fighting, and launched the battle in the west on February 19.

Air strikes on Isis-held Mosul ‘leave 230 civilians dead’, reports local media

March 23, 2017 By administrator

Iraqis displaced by fighting flee to the Al-Sumoud neighbourhood of Mosul on March 22, 2017 AFP/Getty Images

US Central Command says it is researching reports of extensive loss of civilian life in third such alleged incident in fight against Isis in recent weeks

Bethan McKernan Beirut

Approximately 230 people are reported to have been killed in what is thought to have been a US-led coalition air strike on an Isis-held neighbourhood of Mosul.

A correspondent for Rudaw, a Kurdish news agency operating in northern Iraq, said that 137 people – most believed to be civilians – died when a bomb hit a single building in al-Jadida, in the western side of the city. Another 100 were killed nearby.

“Some of the dead were taking shelter inside the homes,” Hevidar Ahmed said from the scene.

A daily assessment report from Central Command, which coordinates US military action in Iraq, stated that five strikes near Mosul on Thursday had destroyed five Isis units and a sniper team, as well as 11 fighting positions, vehicles and artillery equipment.

A spokesperson for CentCom told The Independent they were aware of the loss of civilian life as reported by Rudaw and were “researching” the situation.

No other fighting force in the country has the capability to launch an aerial attack of such a scale.

Iraqi coalition ground forces, backed by a US-led coalition bombing campaign, began the gruelling Operation Inherent Resolve to remove Isis from Mosul in October 2016.

The jihadist fighters now hold onto approximately a quarter of the city on the western bank of the River Tigris that cuts through Mosul from north to south.

An estimated 400,000 Iraqis are trapped in the remaining Isis-held parts of the city, the UN’s refugee agency said on Thursday. Those caught up in the fighting face growing food shortages or being hit by crossfire if they try to leave.

Isis has used civilian homes to shelter fighters and weapons throughout the battle for the city, rigging buildings and streets with explosives to impede Iraqi troops’ progress.

The fighting has come at a heavy price for both Mosul’s residents and Iraqi soldiers: thousands of Iraqi civilians have died in the fighting, and a cumulative total of more than 200,000 displaced from their homes.

At least 6,878 civilians were killed in violence mainly inflicted by Isis around the country last year, the United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) has said.

Many Mosul residents report their loved ones have died as a result of friendly fire rather than Isis’s warfare tactics.

AirWars, a UK-based non-profit monitoring the effect of anti-Isis air strikes on civilians, said last week that they believed 370 civilians died in US-led coalition bombing in just the first week of March alone.

Over the border in Syria in the last week, the US has been accused of killing civilians in two separate bombing incidents: 33 died in a strike near Raqqa which was supposed to target Isis positions, and more than 50 after a strike hit a mosque in Aleppo province rather than an al-Qaeda meeting point.

Removing Isis from Mosul, which is Iraq’s second largest city, will effectively spell the end of Isis as a land-holding force in the country, driving the remnants of the group back to their de facto capital of Raqqa.

While losing the city will be a decisive blow, the jihadi organisation is expected to pose a renewed threat in the form of an insurgency war against Iraqi forces.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-air-strikes-mosul-230-civilians-killed-dead-isis-held-iraq-battle-islamic-state-a7646011.html