Mosul: ISIS Daesh cut off water to thousands of civilians

January 10, 2017 By administrator

Iraqis gather to receive water in the Zuhur neighborhood of Mosul, on December 8, 2016 during an ongoing operation against Takfiri Daesh terrorists. (Photo by AFP)

Daesh terrorists have cut off water supply to dozens of liberated areas in Mosul to keep civilians under control as the Iraqi army and allied fighters renew their push to expel the extremists out of their last urban stronghold.

Nineveh provincial council member Hossam al-Abbar told Arabic-language al-Sumaria television network on Monday that Daesh terrorists have cut water to 30 neighborhoods in the eastern flank of the city, located some 400 kilometers north of the capital Baghdad.

Abbar added that only 10 liberated districts have access to potable water intermittently.

He further noted that water stations in al-Ghabat neighborhood, which nurture western Mosul, are still under Daesh control, and that the terror group has turned off the pumps which send water toward liberated neighborhoods in the city.

The official said Daesh has ordered its members to target areas retaken from them with mortar shells and artillery rounds.

Abbar also urged the Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works plus Ministry of Finance to allocate a certain budget as well as tankers to supply drinking water to Mosul neighborhoods.

Zuhair Hazem al-Jabouri, an official with Mosul’s energy and water department, said last month that “Daesh is depriving people of drinking water in eastern Mosul. They want to force people to retreat with them in order to use them as human shields.”

Iraq kills top Baghdadi aide

Amid army advances in and around Mosul, a high-ranking aide to Daesh ringleader Ibrahim al-Samarrai aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed in a precision airstrike carried out by the Iraqi Air Force in the central part of the city.

A Nineveh provincial source, requesting anonymity, said the senior Daesh figure, identified by the nom de guerre Abu Loei, was killed along with four other terrorists during an airstrike against al-Islah al-Zeraei neighborhood. Abu Loei was reportedly the director of Daesh security affairs.

An unnamed security source also said federal police forces are closing in on Mosul University’s building, noting that the site is considered as one of the main positions of Daesh in the eastern side of the city.

Iraqi army soldiers, supported by fighters from allied Popular Mobilization Units — commonly known in Arabic as Hashd al-Sha’abi — and Kurdish Peshmerga forces, launched a joint operation on October 17 to retake Mosul from Daesh terrorists.

A total of 137,880 people, or 22,980 families, have been displaced from Mosul and neighboring areas since the start of the operations, according to figures released by the International Organization for Migration.

Iraq forces gain more ground in eastern Mosul

January 4, 2017 By administrator

Iraqi rapid response forces gather during the battle with Daesh in the Mithaq district of eastern Mosul, Iraq, on January 3, 2017. (Photo by Reuters)

Iraqi forces have managed to liberate another neighborhood from the grip of Takfiri Daesh terrorists in the eastern part of Mosul, as they continue mop-up operations in the already recaptured areas of the strategic city.

The Lebanon-based al-Mayadeen TV reported the recapture of Wahdah district, located on the left bank of the Tigris River, on Wednesday.

The report further said that the Iraqi forces had wrested control over the road linking Mosul to the city of Kirkuk.

Separately, unidentified security sources said an elite Iraqi Interior Ministry unit had entered the recently liberated Mithaq district and was clearing the area.

This is while clashes continued between the Iraqi forces and Daesh militants in and around Mosul with plumes of smoke and shelling visible in the distance from Mithaq.

The Takfiri elements were said to have concealed car bombs in the area and made underground tunnels and surface-level passageways.

An unnamed Mithaq resident said he was “very afraid,” adding, “A Daesh anti-aircraft weapon was positioned close to our house…. We could see a small number of Daesh fighters in the street carrying light and medium weapons. They were hit by planes.”

Most of those fleeing Mosul were reported to be from the city’s eastern neighborhoods while residents of the militant-held west were increasingly attempting to escape.

“Finally we have been freed,” another Mithaq resident said.

Meanwhile the Daesh-affiliated Amaq news agency released footage showing clashes in the Intisar district of eastern Mosul.

UN: Over 125,000 Iraqis displaced

In another development on Wednesday, the United Nations said that 125,568 Iraqis had been displaced since the start of the Mosul liberation operation.

“Following the intensification of military operations in Mosul city on 29 December, the rate of displacement… has increased markedly, with over 9,000 people having fled the city in the space of four days,” said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Iraqi army troops and allied fighters have been conducting a major offensive since last October to liberate Mosul that fell to Daesh in 2014. They launched the second phase of the operation on December 29, 2016.

OCHA further noted that about 14,000 of the displaced Iraqis had already returned to their homes in the recaptured areas.

Staff Lieutenant General Abdulwahab al-Saadi, a top commander in Iraq’s Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), announced last week that over 60 percent of eastern Mosul had been recaptured from terrorists.

Iraqi police down 3 Daesh drones

Iraqi forces launch new advance against Islamic State inside Mosul

December 29, 2016 By administrator

After a two-week pause, Iraqi troops have resumed the battle for the largest city controlled by the Islamic State. US military advisors will likely play a role in the second phase in the offensive to retake Mosul.

Iraqi security forces started a new push into Mosul on Thursday in an attempt to recapture the city held captive by the self-styled “Islamic State” (IS) since June 2014. Government troops pushed into several southeastern districts of the city in an effort to bring eastern Mosul under their control.

“The second phase of liberating the left bank in Mosul was launched, and our forces began advancing toward the Al-Quds neighborhood,” Abdulghani al-Assadi, a senior officer in Iraq’s Counter-Terrorism Service, told the AFP news agency. “Now our forces clashed with the enemy and there is resistance.”

Slower progress than expected

Iraq started an offensive on Mosul two month ago, involving 100,000 Iraqi troops, members of the Kurdish security forces and Shiite militia. The campaign entered a planned “operational refit” earlier this month after advances into the city progressed slower than hoped since many civilians remained in the city and weather conditions were rough.

Military advisers from the United States, a key Iraqi ally in the international coalition fighting IS, will likely have a larger role in the upcoming battles as US soldiers are embedded more extensively with Iraqi forces.

Ground troops aided by airstrikes have captured about a quarter of the city, exclusively in eastern Mosul. Mosul is divided into two parts of roughly the same size by the Tigris River. IS controls western Mosul as well as strategically relevant roads leading into the city from the west. An airstrike recently disabled the last bridge across the Tigris.

Mosul is the largest city held by IS. The city in northern Iraq had a pre-war population of roughly 2 million, up to 1.5 million people are estimated to have remained in the embattled city. Its fall could mean an end to IS in Iraq. The jihadi group has tried to form a self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Northern Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi initially pledged that Mosul would be in government control by the end of this year. Given that western Mosul is still in control of IS, this deadline will likely not be met. On Tuesday, al-Abadi said it would take another three months to eliminate IS.

mb/sms (AP, AFP, Reuters)

Presstv Report: US airstrike in Mosul leaves 90 Iraqi troopers dead

December 11, 2016 By administrator

This file photo shows two US Navy F/A-18E Super Hornets supporting the operations against Daesh terrorists, after being refueled by a KC-135 Stratotanker over Iraq. (Photo by AFP)

At least 90 Iraqi soldiers have lost their lives when fighter jets from the United States Air Force (USAF) mistakenly struck their position in Mosul as government forces and allied fighters are trying to flush Daesh terrorists out of the strategic northern city.

An Iraqi army source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Arabic service of Russia’s Sputnik news agency on Saturday that the airstrike had targeted soldiers from the 9th Armored Division of the Iraqi army the previous day, destroying eight infantry fighting vehicles as well as four Humvee military trucks. Some 100 soldiers were also wounded as a result of the attack.

On Saturday, the commander of Nineveh Liberation Operation, Lieutenant General Abdul Amir Yarallah, said in a press statement that Iraqi counter-terrorism forces had managed to free the entire neighborhoods of al-Qadisiyah and al-Morour in the eastern quarter of Mosul from Daesh.

Yarallah added that security forces had also raised the Iraqi flag over several buildings in both districts, and inflicted heavy human and material losses on the terrorists.

The Iraqi Joint Operations Command (JOC) also stated that Iraqi F-16 fighter jets had carried out airstrikes on designated targets inside Mosul, destroying three bomb-making workshops and as many arms depots.

Iraqi army soldiers, pro-government fighters from Popular Mobilization Units, also known by the Arabic name Hashd al-Sha’abi, and Kurdish Peshmerga forces launched joint operations on October 17 to retake Mosul from Daesh terrorists.

The Iraqi forces’ advance has, however, been slowed down due to the presence of hundreds of thousands of civilians, many of whom are prevented from leaving Mosul by Daesh.

The United Nations says more than 82,000 civilians have experienced forced displacement in the wake of Mosul operation.

Source: http://presstv.com/Detail/2016/12/10/497297/Iraq-US-airstrike-Mosul-

Iraqi Special Forces win back 3 districts in eastern Mosul

December 9, 2016 By administrator

Iraqi government forces have established full control over three more neighborhoods in the eastern quarter of Mosul as they try to drive Takfiri Daesh terrorists out of the northern city in joint operations with allied fighters and Kurdish Pershmerga forces.

On Friday, Iraqi Special Operations Forces managed to liberate the neighborhoods of Adl, al-E’lam and al-Ta’mim in the eastern part of Mosul, located some 400 kilometers north of the capital Baghdad, and raised the national Iraqi flag over a number of buildings there, Arabic-language al-Forat news agency reported.

Scores of Daesh members were killed and injured during the fierce exchanges of gunfire between government forces and the extremists.

The development came on the same day that pro-government fighters from Popular Mobilization Units, also known by the Arabic name Hashd al-Sha’abi, defused a car bomb in the strategic Tal Abtah region west of Mosul.

Additionally, the Iraqi Defense Ministry announced that Iraq’s Air Force fighter jets had carried out a string of airstrikes against Daesh positions in the eastern and western flanks of Mosul, killing dozens of the Takfiris in the process.

Iraqi warplanes pounded a missile depot in Mosul’s eastern neighborhood of Rashidiya, before targeting a workshop for booby-trapping vehicles and manufacturing bombs near a train station in western Mosul.

Another Daesh position was bombarded in Mosul’s western al-Mansour district as well.

Separately, Iraqi jets, based on information from the Directorate General for Intelligence and Security, launched precision strikes against a Daesh arms depot in Qadisiyah district.

‘ISIS Daesh retreats from major site in Mosul University,

December 5, 2016 By administrator

The ISIS Daesh terrorist group has completely withdrawn from a major site they were using for logistical and housing purposes in the Iraqi city of Mosul after destroying all buildings there as security forces approached, a report says.

Iraq’s BasNews on Sunday quoted an informed source as saying that the Daesh terrorists withdrew from all the buildings of Mosul University, whose buildings they were using as housing centers and for manufacturing weapons, over the past two days.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the Daesh terrorists had destroyed all the buildings and internal roads on the premises with bulldozers, themselves seized from the Mosul municipality back in 2014, when they overran the city.

The “scorched earth” tactic was apparently aimed at hindering the advancement of the Iraqi forces engaged in operations to liberate the city.

The source said that the presence of the terrorists in Mosul’s residential areas had declined.

He also said that the Daesh terrorists had transferred their equipment to areas to “the right side of Mosul, west of Tigris River.”

Meanwhile, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has warned that the fighting in Mosul may lead to the halt of the delivery of humanitarian aid to the one million Iraqi civilians living in the areas held by Daesh in Mosul and other regions.

It also urged the Iraqi forces to set up safe corridors to allow Iraqis flee the Daesh-held areas.

The Iraqi army and volunteer forces launched an offensive to retake Mosul, the last urban area in control of Daesh in Iraq, on October 17.

The northern and western parts of Iraq have been plagued by violence ever since Daesh terrorists mounted an offensive there more than two years ago. The militants have been committing vicious crimes in the areas under their control.

Meanwhile, the director of the Department of Displacement and Migration in Anbar Province, Mohammed Rashid, has said that some 113,000 displaced families have returned to the province’s capital city, which was liberated from Daesh in January.

He told Iraq’s al-Sumaria news website that, “More than 57,000 displaced families returned to Ramadi and over 28, 000 displaced families returned to Fallujah,” the latter being another city liberated by Iraqi forces this year.

Many residents left their homes in Anbar after Daesh terrorists took control of most of the province’s cities in 2014.

Iraqi forces say nearly 1,000 Daesh terrorists killed in Mosul

November 28, 2016 By administrator

Counter Terrorism Services (CTS) commander, Major General Abdul Ghani al-Assadi, gestures as he talks during an interview in the town of Bartella east of Mosul, Iraq, November 27, 2016. (Photo by Reuters)

Nearly 1,000 Daesh terrorists have been killed by the Iraqi special forces six weeks into a major operation to liberate the northern city of Mosul, a top commander says.

Major General Abdul Ghani al-Assadi, one of the commanders of the special forces, said on Monday that more than 992 terrorists had been killed in the fighting in eastern Mosul.

Assadi said the fighting against the terrorists was in progress but at a slower pace due to a change of tactics.

“We have made changes to plans, partly due to the changing nature of the enemy … Daesh is not based in one location, but moving from here to there.”

The commander stressed that the tactics were also changed to protect civilians.

“Progress was faster at the start. The reason is we were operating before in areas without residents, we have arrived in populated districts. So how do we protect civilians? We have sealed off district after district,” he said.

Iraqi army soldiers, backed by pro-government fighters from Popular Mobilization Units and Kurdish Peshmerga forces, launched an operation on October 17 to retake Mosul from the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.

Mosul fell into the hands of Daesh more than two years ago, when the terror outfit began its campaign of death and destruction in northern and western Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has vowed that Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city and the last stronghold of the Daesh terrorists in the Arab country, will be fully recaptured by year-end. 1

Iraqi volunteers capture major road Tal Afar and Sanjar effectively seals off Mosul

November 23, 2016 By administrator

Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units, also known as Hashd al-Sha’abi, have captured a road that links the two strategically important towns of Tal Afar and Sanjar to the west of Mosul.

The achievement effectively seals off Mosul, the last stronghold of Daesh in Iraq. The city is already surrounded on the northern, southern, and eastern parts by government troops.

According to Iraq’s al-Sumaria TV network, the road which is Daesh’s last remaining supply route linking Mosul to other Iraqi cities as well as to eastern Syria has now been cut off.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi charged Hashd al-Sha’abi with the task of liberating the nearby town of Tal Afar which lies on a key road used by Daesh terrorists to move back and force to Syria.

A spokesman of the volunteer forces said the liberation of Tal Afar located about 55 km west of Mosul needed highly trained forces capable of fighting in urban areas.

Abadi’s order came as reports said some 70 high-ranking Daesh commanders were leaving Tal Afar for the northern Syrian city of al-Raqqah.

Reports also said the self-proclaimed media minister of Daesh was killed in an Iraqi airstrike in Nineveh province. The man identified as Zaid Khorwah was reportedly responsible for the production of Daesh propaganda videos.

Troops took control of the Kara Tepe village in the northern province and raised the national flag over several buildings there.

Hashd al-Sha’abi fighters meanwhile shot down a Daesh drone which was collecting information on the positions and movements of volunteer forces over western Mosul.

Elsewhere in the town of al-Qaim, about 150 families were reported to have fled Daesh militants.

Iraqi government troops and Kurdish forces were preparing to liberate Hawijah about 282 kilometers north of Baghdad, with one military commander saying that some 2,000 Daesh terrorists were holed up in the city.

Hawijah slipped into Daesh hands in June 2014, and is considered one of the main strongholds of the terrorist group in Iraq.

Iraqi Christians want to document IS crimes

November 23, 2016 By administrator

christian-life For over two years, the Iraqi Christian town of Qaraqosh was the favorite abode for many leaders of the “Islamic State” (IS) group. Judit Neurink reports from Irbil.

“The best houses were occupied by their leaders,” says Father Ammar of the Syrian Catholic Church, who works closely together with the Bishop of Mosul. He flicks through his phone until he finds a picture, and reads out several names, all starting with Abu: “They wrote their names on the wall of our Church of The Immaculate. And one of their leaders lived in the house of the church,” he told DW.

Since August 2014, when IS fighters overtook the Christian towns of the Nineve Plains, Father Ammar has been living in the Christian enclave Ankawa of the Kurdish capital Irbil, like most of his flock who made up the biggest part of the community of Qaraqosh. Days after the Iraqi military liberated Qaraqosh at the end of October he went back.

“The first thing I saw was the hospital and I could not recognize it, the same for the church. I cried, that first feeling was so hard,” he says, sitting in a portacabin near the Mart Shmony Church in Ankawa, where he offers church members help and assistance.

“They are angry that the government wants to clean up in Qaraqosh, to hide the crimes,” Ammar explains. “We want to document everything, all the damage and destruction, before anything is cleaned. Already something has been changed, the IS slogans have been painted over.”

Many of the IS fighters were locals from the surrounding villages, he says. They provided the leaders with fuel for electricity and food. “Houses became clinics and pharmacies. Some were stores for weapons. The Church of Mar Gorgis became a bomb factory.”

All the houses were looted – just like the cemeteries where graves were opened to steal anything valuable buried with the dead. In one of the houses belonging to the church IS fighters kept several Yazidi women as slaves.

Zarifa Badoos Daddo, 77, lived through it all, staying in her house in Qaraqosh during the IS occupation together with an even older friend, who was blind and deaf.

Daddo buried her husband in the first weeks after IS arrived. When the group evacuated the remaining 200 mostly elderly Christians, it seemed to have forgotten about Daddo and her companions. “They had registered us and told us they would let us go to Irbil. But they never came,” she told DW.

With water and electricity cut off, she and her friend only survived because fighters regularly brought them food, she recounts in her brother’s house in Ankawa. She recognized many of them as locals from the villages, some were nice, joking with her and taking care of her. One of them warned her against going out to fetch water in her yard, as the coalition planes were always looking for movements on the ground.

From her window overlooking the town she saw the fighters moving around. “Some had a beard, some did not,” she says. The young ones were the problem, she says, threatening her with their weapons and forcing her to convert to Islam. “A fake conversion,” she calls it. They made her spit on her crucifix and stamp on a portrait of the Virgin Mary.

“Sometimes I asked Maryam, what am I, Muslim or Christian?” she recounts. “I could not sleep. Sometimes I felt I was going crazy and I hit myself.”

Final resting place

Although her house is the only one in Qaraqosh that was not looted completely, fighters came time and again to demand her gold and money. Eventually they found the 15 million Iraqi dinars (over 11,000 euros) she had hidden in a pot in the fridge. Just days before the liberation a young man walked in and took what he wanted from the house.

When the liberation came with bombs and artillery, IS had not brought her food for weeks – the group’s leaders had long since left. She saw the houses in her neighborhood being put on fire and was very sacred when the one attached to hers was torched. “That’s when I saw they had broken through walls to be able to move from house to house without being seen.”

The total number of Christians in the town still missing after the IS invasion varies between 30 to 70. Bodies are still being found. Faraj Saqat, 73, was discovered by his son Edmon buried in the front garden. “I saw some stones and his walking stick. It was a Muslim grave,” Edmon told DW.

Edmon came from London to find his father having lost contact a year ago. He thinks he was buried last winter by a Muslim friend from one of the villages who passed by regularly. “He wore his winter clothes.” He hopes to eventually bury him in the Qaraqosh cemetery: “He wanted to die in Qaraqosh. Once his body has been officially identified, we will bury him there.”

Source: DW.com

Battle to Drive Isis Out of Tal Afar small Turkmen city near Mosul Will be Bitter and Bloody

November 16, 2016 By administrator

tal-afar Tal Afar is a small Turkmen city notorious for sectarian hatred and slaughter, which may soon be engulfed by a final battle between Isis and its bitterest enemies. Shia paramilitaries seeking revenge for past massacres of their co-religionists may soon assault the place which has provided many of the most feared Isis commanders, judges and religious officials.

“Isis is full of killers, but the worst killers of all come Tal Afar,” says a senior Iraqi official who did not want his name published. Abbas, a 47-year-old Shia Turkman from Tal Afar living in exile in the Kurdish city of Zakho, agrees, saying that several of the senior military commandersof the self-declared Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi come from there. He adds that officers from the Shia paramilitaries have been told that they will soon attack the city. The Turkmen are on of Iraq’s smaller minorities but important because of their links to Isis and to Turkey.

Between 10,000 and 15,000 Shia Hashd al-Shaabi are now massing to the south and west of Mosul with Tal Afar in their sights. A spokesman for them said on Tuesday that they were within twelve miles of Tal Afar airport.

The paramilitaries.often referred to as militia, include an estimated 3,000 Shia Turkmen from Tal Afar who were forced to flee in 2014 when Isis seized the city, though it had long been infamous for its death squads operating on behalf of both the Sunni majority and Shia minority. Sectarian killings began in 2003 when Saddam Hussein was overthrown by the US-led invasion and the city, strategically placed between Mosul and the Syrian border, became a stronghold, first for Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and later for Isis.

“Fear fills the city like a great cloud,” says Abbas. “Many senior members of Isis have left for Syria, but locals who worked with al-Qaeda and Isis are still there and are frightened. I am sure that after the battle of Tal Afar there will be a great massacre.” But, though the Sunni Turkmen believe they may be slaughtered they are determined not to surrender.

Abbas says that he believes that the Iraqi Army can take the city though only after heavy fighting because “the locals of Tal Afar which are with Isis will never leave the the city. They have a strong belief that Tal Afar is Sunni not Shia and they prefer Isis to the Iraqi government.” But, bad though occupation by the Iraqi Army would be in their eyes, its capture by the Hashd would be even worse says Abbas.

But this is what is most likely to happen according to Khasro Goran, a former deputy governor of Mosul who now leads the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) MPs in the Iraqi parliament. After a visit to the area, he said in an interview that though the Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Badi had promised “that only the Iraqi Army would enter Tal Afar, I believe the Hashd will do so also.” The difference between the paramilitaries and government security forces is not entirely clear cut, because the former have been known to change into federal police and other uniforms in the past to hide their presence in the battle zone.

What happens next in Tal Afar has international implications because Turkey has threatened military intervention in defence of the Sunni Turkmen if the Shia paramilitaries enter the city. A Turkish mechanised brigade has been moved to the Turkish Iraqi border to give substance to the threat. The KDP, the dominant Kurdish party in this part of northern Iraq, is likewise worried by the presence of powerful Shia militia forces in the region.

In a recent paper on “The Looming Problem of Tal Afar” for the Wilson Centre in Washington DC, Professor Gareth Stansfield of Exeter University gives a warning that the struggle for Tal Afar could be the flashpoint leading to a wider conflict. He writes that “because of Tal Afar’s early and close association with Sunni jihadism in Iraq, and perhaps also because of the astonishingly brutal nature of the sectarian conflict that engulfed Tal Afar from 2005-2007, the town has taken on the reputation of being Isis’s very own heart of darkness among Shia and Kurds alike.” He adds that the political implications of what happens in Tal Afar has the potential to destabilise the US-orchestrated operation to take Mosul.

Abbas says that as of last weekend the Hashd were within four miles of Tal Afar. He believes that for Isis the city has always been of great importance because of its position close to the border with Syria and Turkey. He says that under Saddam Hussein there was no sectarian friction between Sunni and Shia Turkmen, but this changed after the invasion of 2003. Aside from their sympathy for Isis, Abbas says that these days “the Sunni Turkmen lean towards Turkey and the Shia Turkmen lean towards the Baghdad government and Iran.”

For the moment living conditions in Tal Afar are not too bad as Isis is giving local fighters their basic needs. Food still comes through from Syria, but over the last week supplies have been more limited and Abbas says that, though most things are still available, people “don’t have the money to buy anything.”

The capture of Mosul and Tal Afar by the Iraqi government and the Hashd would severely weaken Isis and re-establish the authority of the Baghdad government in northern Iraq. The Sunni population of Iraq, a fifth of the population, would lose their last urban strongholds. Turkey may be tempted to intervene, but this will be opposed by the US and Baghdad. Isis has evidently decided to draw out the fighting for Mosul and Tal Afar, and, if it is able to do so, not much of either city will survive the battle.

Source: http://www.unz.com/pcockburn/battle-to-drive-isis-out-of-tal-afar-will-be-bitter-and-bloody/