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Iraqi forces set sight on Old City riverside, PM sees Mosul victory soon

[June 27, 2017] By Stephen Kalin

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi forces on Tuesday pushed towards the river side of Mosul's Old City, their key target in the eight-month campaign to capture Islamic State's de-facto capital, and Iraq's prime minister predicted victory very soon.

Iraqi forces, battling up to 350 militants dug in among civilians in the Old City, said federal police had dislodged IS insurgents from the Ziwani mosque and were only a few days away from ousting militants completely from the Old City.

"The victory announcement will come in a very short time," Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on his website on Monday evening.

"The operation is continuing to free the remaining parts of the Old City," Lieutenant General Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi of the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) told a Reuters correspondent near the frontline in the heart of the Old City.

Iraqi forces had about 600 meters (2,000 ft) left to cover before they reach Cornishe Street alongside the western bank of the Tigris, Federal Police commander Lieutenant General Raed Shaker Jawdat told Iraqi State TV.

"In a few days our forces will reach Cornishe Street and bring the battle to its conclusion," said Jawdat, adding that federal police had forced militants out of Ziwani mosque in the Old City's southwestern corner.

The fall of Mosul would mark the end of the Iraqi half of the "caliphate" proclaimed by Islamic State though the militant group remains in control of large areas of both Iraq and Syria.

Federal Police and elite CTS units in Mosul are attacking IS fighters in the Old City's maze of narrow alleyways, together with the army and the interior ministry's Emergency Response Division (ERD).

Up to 350 militants are estimated by the Iraqi military to be dug in there among civilians in wrecked houses and crumbling infrastructure.

They were making extensive use of booby traps, suicide bombers and sniper fire to slow the advance of Iraqi forces from the west, the north and the south.

Those residents who have escaped say many of the civilians trapped behind Islamic State lines -- put at 50,000 by the Iraqi military - have little food, water or medicines.

A U.S.-led international coalition is providing air and ground support in the eight-month-old offensive.

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A destroyed al-Hadba minaret at Grand al-Nuri Mosque (L) is seen in Mosul, Iraq June 27, 2017. REUTERS/Erik De Castro

HUMAN SHIELDS

Aid organizations say Islamic State has stopped many civilians from leaving, using them as human shields. Hundreds of civilians fleeing the Old City have been killed in the past three weeks.

The militants last week destroyed the historic Grand al-Nuri Mosque and its leaning minaret from which their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate spanning parts of Iraq and Syria three years ago. The mosque's grounds remain under the militants' control.

Iraqi troops captured on Monday the neighborhood of al-Faruq in the northwestern side of the Old City, facing the mosque, the military said.

Only a handful of neighborhood remain to be cleared, al-Saadi said, standing atop a rooftop overlooking al-Faruq street which now marks the frontline, a few dozen meters (yards) from the old mosque.

Sporadic sniper fire could be heard, and an incoming rocket, as the troops used a white commercial drone to survey the insurgents' defenses. The Iraqi forces started attacking the western side of Mosul in February, a month after taking the side located east of the Tigris.

Islamic State's Baghdadi has left the fighting in Mosul to local commanders and is assumed to be hiding in the Iraqi-Syrian border area. There has been no confirmation of Russian reports over the past days that he has been killed.

In Syria, the insurgents' "capital" Raqqa, is nearly encircled by a U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led coalition.

(Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

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