MOSUL: IS fighters launched a counter-attack against advancing US-backed Iraqi forces in western Mosul during a storm earlier, as the battle for control of the militants’ last major urban stronghold in Iraq intensified.
Explosions and gun fire rang out across the city’s southwestern districts in the early hours of Thursday. The fighting eased in the late morning, although a Reuters correspondent saw an air strike and rebel mortar fire.
A senior Iraqi officer said IS staged its attack on units from the elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) when the storm hampered air surveillance and on-the-ground visibility. He said some militant fighters hid amongst displaced families to get close to the US-trained troops.
Iraqi forces captured the eastern side of Mosul in January after 100 days of fighting and launched their attack on the districts that lie west of the Tigris river on February 19.
Defeating IS in Mosul would crush the Iraqi wing of the caliphate declared by the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, in 2014, from Mosul’s grand old Nuri mosque.
Residents reported that civilians were killed in air strike on an IS-run mosque on Wednesday, highlighting the perilous situation facing hundreds of thousands of Mosul residents as the allied forces step up their campaign.
The residents said the blast collapsed or damaged a number of neighbouring houses, many of which are badly made and poorly maintained. A spokesman for the US-led coalition said he was not aware of an air strike on the Omar al Aswad mosque.
The mosque was where IS sent members of the Iraqi national police and armed forces to surrender their weapons and register in a militant database when the group seized control of the city in 2014. In return they received a pass to prevent their arrest and possible execution at militant check points.
The Iraqi military believes several thousand militants, including many who travelled from Western countries, are hunkered down in Mosul among the remaining civilian population, which aid agencies estimated to number 750,000 at the start of the latest offensive.
The militants are using suicide car bombers, snipers and booby traps to counter the offensive waged by the 100,000-strong force of Iraqi troops, Kurdish peshmerga fighters and paramilitary groups. — Reuters
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