Tag Archives: Iraq

Most Islamic State commanders in Mosul already killed, Iraqi general says

Iraqi soldiers in Mosul

By Isabel Coles

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Most Islamic State (IS) commanders in Mosul have been killed in battles with Iraqi government forces that raged over the past three months in the eastern side of the city, an Iraqi general said on Thursday.

The fight to take the western side of Mosul, which remains under the jihadists’ control, should not be more difficult than the one on the eastern side, Lieutenant-General Abdul Ghani al-Assadi told Reuters before embarking on a tour of areas newly retaken.

Assadi’s Counter-Terrorism Service announced on Wednesday that almost all of the city’s eastern half had been brought under government control.

“God willing, there will be a meeting in the next few days attended by all the commanders concerned with liberation operations,” he said, replying to a question on when he expects a thrust into the western side of Mosul to begin.

“It will not be harder than what we have seen. The majority of (IS) commanders have been killed in the eastern side.” He did not give further details.

Since late 2015, government forces backed by U.S.-led coalition air power have wrested back large amounts of northern and western territory overrun by IS in a shock 2014 offensive.

On Thursday, regular Iraqi army troops captured the Nineveh Oberoy hotel, the so-called “palaces” area on the eastern bank of the Tigris, and Tel Kef, a small town just to the north according to military statements in Baghdad.

The army is still battling militants in al-Arabi, the last district which remains under their control east of the river, said one of the statements.

Over 50 watercraft and barges used by Islamic State to supply their units east of the river were destroyed in air strikes, the U.S. envoy to the coalition, Brett McGurty, tweeted.

Mogul’s five bridges across the Tigris had already been partially damaged by U.S.-led air strikes to slow the militants’ movement, before Islamic State blew up two of them.

“God willing, there will be an announcement in the next few days that all the eastern bank is under control,” Assai said.

A Reuters correspondent saw army troops deploying in an area by the river as mortar and gun fire rang out further north.

On one of the streets newly recaptured from Islamic State, men were reassembling breeze blocks into a wall that was blown up by a suicide car bomb several days ago.

Prime Minister Hailer al-Badri said late on Tuesday that Islamic State had been severely weakened in the Mosul campaign, and the military had begun moving against it in the western half. He did not elaborate.

If the U.S.-backed campaign is successful it will likely spell the end of the Iraqi part of the self-styled caliphate declared by the ultra-hardline Islamic State in 2014, which extends well into neighboring Syria.

Several thousand civilians have been killed or wounded in the Mosul fighting since October.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed; editing by Mark Heinrich and Robin Pomeroy)

Iraqis who escaped Islamic State grapple with trauma

Displaced people, who fled Islamic State militants, cross the bridge in Al-Muthanna neighborhood of Mosul, Iraq,

By Stephen Kalin

DEBAGA, Iraq (Reuters) – While fleeing Islamic State rule in northern Iraq three months ago, Laila saw two of her daughters die in front of her. Crippled by grief and the trauma of that night, she now struggles to walk and hardly eats.

Running under the cover of darkness after more than two years under the jihadists’ harsh rule in Shirqat town, south of Mosul, Laila’s children stepped on a mine. The youngest one died on the spot, covered in blood and partially buried in the dirt.

Her 16-year-old daughter had a leg blown off and lost consciousness. Laila tied the girl’s leg with her own headscarf, then carried her on her back for several kilometers to the Iraqi army’s frontline.

“I could hear her soul leaving her body, her head on my shoulder,” she recounted earlier this month at a nearby camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) where she now struggles with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The battle to retake Mosul, Islamic State’s last major stronghold in Iraq, is playing out among the city’s nearly 1.5 million residents who have spent 2-1/2 years under the ultra-hardline group’s repression.

The militants have employed extreme violence to impose their strict interpretation of Islamic law in territories they seized in 2014, whipping people for smoking, cutting off hands for stealing, stoning women for adultery, and throwing men off of buildings for homosexuality.

Several thousand civilians have been killed or wounded in the street-to-street fighting since the U.S.-backed offensive began in October.

Nearby camps are full of civilians displaced from in and around Mosul and many suffer from depression and anxiety disorders, aid groups say.

“I feel lost, my life has no meaning anymore,” said Laila. “If your car is stolen, you can buy another one. If your house is destroyed you can build another one. But a life cannot be replaced.”

She is taking psychotropic medication and attends weekly counseling sessions run by aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), but she says nothing helps.

“Treatment cannot heal a heart in pain,” she said.

MASS TRAUMA

In a nearby tent at Debaga sits a young mother of three, from another village south of Mosul. She looks about twice her 20 years and speaks in a monotone, rarely making eye contact.

It was during their escape last autumn that she went into labor, giving birth to twins. The couple declined to go into details about the circumstances of the birth, but the woman has since been diagnosed with depression and PTSD.

A counselor says she has struck her husband and tried to kill one of her babies. She also has suicidal feelings but refuses medication.

“She is talking to you normally right now, but sometimes she chokes the baby and tells me, ‘I don’t want him, you take him’,” her husband said. Their names are withheld by Reuters to protect their safety.

Their flight is just one of a raft of deeply traumatic events suffered by their family in recent years, and by many others like them.

They had not yet fled their village when Islamic State fighters stormed their home, accusing the husband of sedition. A former policeman, he had worked with U.S. forces following the 2003 invasion.

The militants shot in the air around him, then put a machine gun to his head and dragged him off to a mosque where they beat him.

Another time, an air strike destroyed a neighbor’s house. Their dog picked through the rubble and dragged back human remains.

“There were parts left there, a hand or a leg,” the woman said. “The dog brought them to our front yard and chewed on them in front of our kids.”

LIMITED ACCESS TO MEDICATION

Pre-existing mental health conditions affecting IDPs have been exacerbated by limited access to medication under IS rule and the trauma of displacement.

Those still in Mosul have even fewer opportunities for treatment, as is the case for those affected by physical illness and the wounded.

A resident of Muharibeen district told Reuters last week that his mother fell into a coma more than a month ago when Islamic State fighters stormed their house.

He pleaded in vain for an ambulance to transport her to nearby Erbil, the capital of the relatively peaceful, autonomous Kurdish region, where hospitals treat those of Mosul’s wounded civilians who make it there. As of Friday, his mother was still at home in Mosul, and still unconscious.

Another local man said his five-year-old daughter, who has a brain defect due to premature birth, has been unable to obtain medicine for more than two years. She can barely speak.

Treatment of the displaced is hampered by the continued violence in Mosul.

“The rate of relapse is very high… because the IDPs on a daily basis receive painful news and stories,” said Bilal Budair, MSF’s mental health manager.

“So we treat and support them, but the bad news has an opposite effect and sets back some of the patients to zero.”

(Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Iraqi forces push into IS-held pocket in Mosul

Young boy in the Andalus district holds up his shirt to show Iraqi forces that he is not wearing a suicide vest during an operation to clear the al-

By Isabel Coles and John Davison

MOSUL, Iraq/BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi special forces pushed deeper into Islamic State-held districts in eastern Mosul on Tuesday, and army units battled the militants inside a military base in the north of the city, military officials said.

Islamic State has been driven out of most eastern districts of its Iraqi stronghold in the three months since the U.S.-backed campaign began. Iraqi troops have seized large areas along the river, which bisects Mosul from north to south.

Capture of the entire east bank, which military officials say is imminent, will allow the army, special forces and elite police units to begin attacks on the city’s west, still fully held by the militants.

Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) forces pushed into the Eastern Nineveh and Souq al-Ghanam districts, which are flanked by areas held by Iraqi troops, spokesman Sabah al-Numan said.

The special forces have now taken control of the Andalus and Shurta neighborhoods, where they were fighting on Monday, Numan told a Reuters reporter in Mosul.

“Roughly all the eastern axes for which CTS is responsible will be completed and we will announce the liberation of the entire eastern side,” he said, but did not specify when.

A separate military statement said the CTS had also seized al-Muhandiseen district, nearly three miles further northwest, a short distance from the river.

In a parallel advance, Iraqi army troops in the north of the city moved into the Kindi military base, and were fighting insurgents inside, an army officer said.

More than 60 neighborhoods in eastern Mosul – out of a total of around 80 – had been recaptured since the start of the offensive in October, Numan told state television.

Advances have gathered pace in the new year thanks to improved battle tactics and coordination between different military branches, U.S. and Iraqi military officials say.

Further south, rapid response units of the Iraqi federal police have secured much of the eastern bank of the Tigris.

A spokesman for those forces, Lieutenant-Colonel Abdel Amir al-Mohammedawi, said some Islamic State fighters had fled by boat across the river, taking civilians as human shields.

“They fled the eastern bank for the west, and took women and children,” he told Reuters.

Islamic State has fought from among crowded residential areas and Reuters witnesses have seen its fighters shoot at civilians in areas they have been driven out of, in apparent efforts to slow the advance of Iraqi forces.

Several thousand civilians have been killed or wounded in fighting since October.

Advances slowed towards the end of last year as the military sought to avoid hitting civilians, Iraqi military officials say.

(Reporting by Isabel Coles in Mosul, John Davison and Saif Hameed in Baghdad, Stephen Kalin in Erbil; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Iraqi forces battle Islamic State near Tigris river in Mosul

Iraqi rapid response fighting Islamic State in Mosul

By Isabel Coles

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi special forces battled Islamic State militants in districts near the Tigris river in Mosul on Monday as they sought to bring more of the east of the city back under government control.

The latest clashes occurred in the neighboring Shurta and Andalus districts. At least three Islamic State suicide car bombs targeted Iraqi forces in Andalus. There was no immediate word on any casualties. In an online post, Islamic State said it had carried out a “martyrdom operation” in the area.

Iraq’s elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) said the militants, who seized Mosul in 2014 as they swept across much of northern Iraq, only to since lose much of that terrain to government counter-offensives, were fighting back hard.

“We’ve begun breaching (Shurta) but there was an attack a few moments ago. By the end of the day we’ll make some progress,” CTS spokesman Sabah al-Numan said.

Shurta and Andalus are situated close to the eastern bank of the Tigris, separated only by some woodland, and within sight of the city’s northernmost bridge across the river.

Iraqi forces, which have reached three of the five bridges, say they will soon fully control the eastern bank. They have already taken areas of the river bank further south.

Once the east bank is recaptured, they can begin attacks on western Mosul, which the Sunni Muslim extremist insurgents still hold.

Iraqi forces have seized most of the east in a 3-month-old U.S.-backed campaign to oust the militants from Iraq’s second largest city, Islamic State’s last major Iraqi stronghold. The Tigris bisects Mosul from north to south.

A Reuters cameraman in a southern district along the Tigris said snipers from elite interior ministry combat units were firing across the river at Islamic State positions.

Fighting has intensified since the turn of the year as Iraqi forces have renewed an offensive against the ultra-hardline militants. Troops had got bogged down in late November and December after entering Mosul as IS fighters fought back with car bombs and snipers, and concealed themselves among a civilian population of up to 1.5 million.

MORE PEOPLE MADE HOMELESS

The United Nations said a further 32,000 Mosul residents had fled the city in just over two weeks, bringing the total number of people made homeless in the campaign to retake Mosul to 161,000.

A resident in western Mosul, reached by phone, said Islamic State combatants had stopped people living in the west from crossing the river to the east.

Another resident said a number of IS militants, including senior leaders in western Mosul, had left the city in the direction of Tal Afar, a town toward the Syrian border.

Shi’ite Muslim militias have advanced on IS-held Tal Afar, and linked up with Kurdish fighters nearby in November.

The Mosul offensive, supported by U.S. coalition air power, involves 100,000-strong combined forces of Iraqi troops, Kurdish peshmerga fighters and Shi’ite militias.

As IS has lost territory in its Mosul bastion, it has carried out bombing attacks in Baghdad and raids on police and army outposts elsewhere in the country. Since the turn of the year, attacks in Baghdad have killed dozens of people.

New York-based Human Rights watch said on Monday that Islamic State’s bombings, which have targeted crowded markets, amounted to “crimes against humanity”.

“(IS) has routinely carried out devastating attacks that appear designed to inflict maximum death and suffering on ordinary Iraqis,” HRW said in a statement. It urged the Iraqi government to greater assist victims of militant attacks.

(Reporting by Isabel Coles in Mosul, Saif Hameed and John Davison in Baghdad; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Iraqi forces reach second Mosul bridge, enter university complex: military

Iraq Special forces fighting militants

By Isabel Coles and John Davison

MOSUL, Iraq/BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi special forces stormed the Mosul University complex in the city’s northeast on Friday and pushed Islamic State further back to reach another bridge across the Tigris river, the military said.

The militants were fighting back at the university, which they had seized when they took over the city in 2014. A Reuters reporter witnessed heavy clashes inside the campus.

Iraqi forces have recaptured most districts in eastern Mosul in nearly three months of a U.S.-backed offensive, which accelerated at the turn of the year with new tactics and better coordination.

They aim to take full control of the eastern bank of the Tigris river, which bisects Mosul from north to south, before launching attacks on the west, still fully in Islamic State hands.

Driving the ultra-hardline Islamist group out of its Mosul stronghold will probably spell the end for the Iraqi side of the caliphate it has declared, stretching into Syria.

Senior Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) commander Sami al-Aridhi said the university was the most important Islamic State base in the eastern half of the city.

BULLDOZERS

He said the CTS had taken over a hill overlooking parts of the campus, including the technical college. “Forces are heading into the depths of the university,” he said.

Earlier, bulldozers had smashed through a wall surrounding the campus and dozens of CTS troops sprinted through carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

An Iraqi officer said army units backed by air strikes had also taken control of Hadba district, north of the university, and would aid the assault on the complex.

Another CTS commander said the capture of the university would enable further advances as it overlooks areas closer to the river.

Advances by Iraqi forces have gathered pace in the last two weeks after troops got bogged down in fierce street fighting in late November and December and militants hid among the civilian population.

New tactics employed since the turn of the year, including a night raid and better defences against suicide car bombs, have given the campaign fresh momentum, U.S. and Iraqi military officials say.

Better coordination between different military divisions, such as the elite CTS and the regular army, has also helped, a senior Western diplomat told Reuters this week.

FIVE BRIDGES

“As (Islamic State) are pulled away to fight CTS, that’s the opportunity for the Iraqi army to attack against a much weaker defence,” the diplomat said.

Securing areas along the Tigris would be crucial, the diplomat added.

“Once you get to the river, you can then slowly mop it up, because you can then cut the lines of communication.”

CTS spokesman Sabah al-Numan told state television: “God willing, within a short period the complete clearing of the left bank of the Tigris will be announced.”

In a separate advance further south in the city, other elite CTS units reached the Second Bridge, also called Freedom Bridge, one of five across the Tigris, the military said in a statement reported by state TV.

Iraqi forces have now reached Mosul’s two southernmost bridges, having battled their way to the Fourth Bridge several days ago.

Assaults on the western half of Mosul are expected to begin once Iraqi forces have secured the east bank.

All the bridges have been hit by U.S. coalition air strikes in an effort to hamper Islamic State’s movements. U.S. and Iraqi military officials say Islamic State has further damaged at least two of them to try to hamper an army advance.

(Reporting by Isabel Coles in Mosul; John Davison and Saif Hameed in Baghdad; Writing by John Davison; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Iraqi forces link up in north Mosul, make gains in southeast

Iraqi soldier standing guard over civilians who fled Mosul and Islamic State

By John Davison and Stephen Kalin

BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi forces joined flanks in northern Mosul and drove back Islamic State militants in the southeast on Thursday in a renewed push that has brought them closer to controlling the eastern half of the city.

Forces from the elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) took control of 7th Nissan and Sadeeq districts, linking up with army troops that had pushed through al-Hadba neighbourhood, CTS spokesman Sabah al-Numan told Reuters.

“This is considered contact between the troops of the northern front and CTS. This… will prevent any gap between the axes which the enemy could use,” he said by phone. “The enemy is now located only in front of the troops, not at their sides.”

Numan said more than 85 percent of eastern Mosul was now under control of pro-government forces, up from nearly 75 percent a week ago.

Brett McGurk, Washington’s envoy to the U.S.-led coalition backing the Iraqi offensive with air strikes, training and advice, called the link-up a “milestone” and said in a tweet that Islamic State’s defences were weakening.

The campaign to recapture Mosul, Islamic State’s last major stronghold in Iraq and the largest urban centre anywhere in the sprawling territory it once controlled, has pushed ahead with renewed vigour since the turn of the year after troops got bogged down inside the city in late November and December.

New tactics, including a night raid, better defences against suicide car bomb attacks and improved coordination between the army and security forces operating on different fronts, have helped forge momentum, U.S and Iraqi officers say.

When it launched the offensive in October, the Iraqi government hoped to have retaken the city by the end of 2016, but Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in December it could now take another three months to drive the militants out.

2016 DEATH TOLL

Iraq’s militarised federal police and rapid response division, an elite Interior Ministry unit, are also battling Islamic State inside Mosul.

They made gains on Thursday in southeastern districts where advances have been particularly tough.

Rapid response units advanced in the Sumer district, which lies on the eastern bank of the Tigris River, and also in neighbouring Sahiroun, according to a military statement.

Forces have pressed forward much more slowly in that area than troops in the east and northeast which commanders blamed on the militants’ hiding among civilians and firing at those who tried to flee.

The ultra-hardline group’s loss of Mosul would probably spell the end for the Iraqi side of its self-styled caliphate, which it declared after sweeping through parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014, though militants will likely still be able to wage an insurgency in both countries and plan attacks on the West.

Iraq Body Count (IBC), a group run by academics and peace activists that has been counting violent deaths in the country since 2003, estimated that more than 16,000 civilians were killed in Iraq in 2016, down about 1,000 from the year before.

Around three-quarters of those identified were men, with the rest spilt evenly between women and children, IBC said in a report.

More than two-thirds of the fatalities occurred in the capital province of Baghdad and Nineveh, where Mosul is located, it said.

Reuters could not independently verify the figures.

(Reporting by John Davison in Baghdad and Stephen Kalin in Erbil; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Iraqi forces push further into northeast Mosul, military says

Iraqi Counter Terrorism units take cover in Mosul as war with Islamic State continues

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi forces made new advances against Islamic State in east Mosul and fought the militants in areas near the Tigris river on Wednesday, seeking to build on recent gains, military officials said.

The elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) pushed into the northeastern Sadeeq neighborhood, officers on the ground said.

A Reuters reporter in eastern Mosul said CTS forces were engaged in clashes in Sadeeq and were firing into neighboring Hadba, where their units had been fighting the day before.

Securing Hadba, Sadeeq and other nearby districts will allow the CTS to advance further toward the Tigris river that runs through the city, control of whose eastern bank will be crucial to launching attacks on western Mosul. Islamic State still holds all Mosul districts west of the river.

Forces also clashed with the militants further south, a military statement said, seeking to build on gains along the river bank, which they reached last week for the first time in the nearly 3-month campaign.

The U.S.-backed offensive to drive Islamic State out of Mosul, its last major Iraq stronghold, involves a 100,000-strong force of Iraqi troops, Kurdish fighters and Shi’ite militias.

The ultra-hardline Sunni group’s loss of the northern city would probably spell the end of the Iraqi side of its self-styled caliphate, which spans parts of Iraq and Syria.

(Reporting by Stephen Kalin in Mosul; John Davison and Saif Hameed in Baghdad; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Iraq forces advance in Mosul but civilian toll mounts

Iraqi forces inspect hospital in Mosul after clashes with ISIS

By John Davison and Stephen Kalin

BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi forces fought their way into more districts of Mosul but advances in the city’s southeast were being slowed by Islamic State’s use of civilians for cover, military officials said on Tuesday.

The United Nations said civilian casualties had streamed into nearby hospitals in the last two weeks as fighting intensified in the jihadist group’s last major stronghold in Iraq.

Advances by elite forces in the city’s east and northeast have picked up speed in a new push since the turn of the year, and U.S.-backed forces have for the first time reached the Tigris river, which bisects the city.

“They entered Hadba (district) today. There is a battle inside the city,” Lt-Colonel Abbas al-Azawi, a spokesman for the Iraqi army’s 16th division, said.

Seizing control of Hadba, a large district, would likely take more than a day, and Islamic State (IS) were deploying suicide bombers, he added.

Recapturing Mosul after more than two years of Islamic State rule would probably spell the end of the Iraqi side of the group’s self-declared caliphate, which spans areas of Iraq and Syria.

Forces in the city’s eastern and northeastern districts, and in particular the elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS), have made rapid gains in past days.

Better defenses against militant car bombs and improved coordination among the advancing troops had helped put Islamic State on the back foot, U.S. and Iraqi military officers said.

“Every day the Iraqi Security Forces go forward and every day the enemy goes backward or underground,” U.S. Air Force Colonel John Dorrian, spokesman for the coalition, told reporters in Erbil in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.

MILITANTS ‘HIDING IN MOSQUES’

But fighting in neighbourhoods in the southeast has been tougher.

“The challenge is that they (IS) are hiding among civilian families, that’s why our advances are slow and very cautious,” Lieutenant-Colonel Abdel Amir al-Mohammedawi, a spokesman for the rapid response units of Iraq’s federal police, told Reuters.

Mohammedawi said rapid response units and Iraqi army units had fought their way into the Palestine and Sumer districts in the last day, but that Islamic State fighters were firing at civilians trying to flee.

“The families, when they see Iraqi forces coming, flee from the areas controlled by Daesh (Islamic State) towards the Iraqi forces, holding up white flags, and Daesh bomb them with mortars and Molotov cocktails, and also shoot at them.

“Whenever they (IS) withdraw from a district, they shell it at random, and it’s heavy shelling,” he said.

Col. Dorrian said militant fighters were hiding in mosques, schools and hospitals, using civilians as human shields.

The United Nations’ humanitarian coordination office (OCHA) said nearly 700 people had been taken to hospitals in cities in Kurdish-controlled areas outside Mosul in the last week, and more than 817 had required hospital treatment a week earlier.

“Trauma casualties remain extremely high, particularly near frontline areas,” OCHA said.

The U.S.-backed operation to drive the ultra-hardline militants from Mosul began in October and has recaptured villages and towns surrounding the city, and most of Mosul’s eastern half.

(Additional reporting by Girish Gupta in Erbil; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Richard Lough)

Iraq special forces advance in east Mosul, close to linking with army

military vehicle of Iraqi forces

By Stephen Kalin and Isabel Coles

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi special forces made further advances against Islamic State in Mosul on Monday, pushing militants out of another eastern district and edging closer to linking up with army units nearby, officers in the northern Iraqi city said.

The Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) said it was working to seize areas overlooking Mosul university in the city’s northeast, after taking over a nearby district.

The advances brought more of eastern Mosul under Iraqi forces’ control a day after elite units reached the Tigris river, as the U.S.-backed offensive to drive Islamic State from its last city stronghold in the country pressed ahead with renewed vigor.

Reaching the river, which runs through the city center, will allow Iraqi forces to begin assaults on western districts still held by Islamic State.

The jihadists have fought back fiercely with suicide car bombs and snipers. Using a network of tunnels and operating close to Mosul’s civilian population, they slowed Iraqi advances in November and December. Islamic State has also killed dozens of Iraqis in attacks in Baghdad and other cities as it comes under increased pressure.

“The Baladiyat neighborhood is done (recaptured) and Sukkar should be done before nightfall,” Major-General Sami al-Askari of the CTS told a Reuters reporter in Mosul.

“This area is very important because it overlooks the university. It is a central district … If it falls we will control the forests, the presidential palaces and the eastern bank of the Tigris,” he said.

Askari said Islamic State has used the university’s laboratories to make biological weapons and store chemicals.

The CTS were also close to linking up with the army nearby, a commander in a regular army unit said.

“They will soon liberate other areas and hopefully finish the eastern side … God willing we will soon announce the liberation of the entire eastern side from Daesh (Islamic State),” Major-General Najm al-Jubbouri told another Reuters reporter in the al-Hadba apartments complex.

Soldiers posed for photos with black Islamic State flags, and the corpses of several Islamic State fighters could be seen.

There were signs that fierce fighting still raged in parts of the complex, however. Islamic State fighters had carried out four to five suicide car bomb attacks in the area since Friday, several officers said.

Monday’s advances also consolidated Iraqi forces’ control of several districts close to the ruins of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh, east of the river.

CTS forces reached the east bank of the Tigris in an area further south on Sunday, an advance which will eventually enable them to begin assaults on the city’s west.

The offensive against the group, which began in October, stalled last month but has regained momentum in the last week.

Recapturing Mosul after more than two years of Islamic State rule would probably spell the end of the Iraqi wing of the group’s self-declared caliphate, which spans areas of Iraq and Syria.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed.; Writing by John Davison; editing by Angus MacSwan and Dominic Evans)

In renewed push, Iraqi forces enter Mosul from north for first time

Iraqi forces moving into position during battle of Mosul against ISIS

By Isabel Coles and Saif Hameed

NORTH OF MOSUL, Iraq/BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi troops entered Mosul from the north for the first time on Friday, part of a new phase in the battle for the city that also saw elite forces bridge a river under cover of darkness in an unprecedented night raid.

The operations were part of a major new push launched last week to seize ground in the city, after progress in the nearly three-month-old operation had stalled for weeks because of a need to slow the advance to protect civilians.

Troops would soon “cut the head of the snake” and drive the ultra-hardline group from its largest urban stronghold, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi said on Friday.

The battle for Mosul is the biggest ground operation in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. A victory by the 100,000-strong U.S.-backed pro-government force would probably spell the end for Islamic State’s self-styled caliphate that has ruled over millions of people in Iraq and Syria since 2014.

But the militants, who are thought to number several thousand in Mosul, continue to put up fierce resistance using suicide car bombs and snipers.

They carried out more attacks against security forces some 200 km south of Mosul on Friday, killing at least four soldiers, and are expected to pose a guerrilla threat to Iraq and Syria, and to plot attacks on the West, even if their caliphate falls.

A spokesman for Iraq’s elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), which has taken the lead in much of the assault on the city, said troops had taken territory in an overnight raid across a Tigris River tributary in east Mosul.

“We used special equipment and had the element of surprise – the enemy did not expect us to mount a night offensive because all previous offensives were during the day,” Sabah al-Numan told Reuters.

Iraqi army units later breached the city from the north for the first time since the offensive began on Oct. 17, entering the residential al-Hadba apartments complex, officers at a nearby command post told Reuters. It was not immediately clear how much of the area they controlled amid resistance from Islamic State.

Iraqi forces have so far recaptured more than half of eastern Mosul, but they have yet to cross the Tigris to face insurgents who are still firmly in control of the western half of the city.

More than 100,000 civilians have fled, but 1.5 million people have stayed behind in the city, which commanders say forced the government troops to slow their advance.

The new phase in the battle has put U.S. troops in a more visible role than at any point since they withdrew from the country in 2011. President Barack Obama, who pulled all U.S. forces out of the country, has sent thousands back as advisers since Islamic State swept through the north in 2014.

In the latest phase of the operation, U.S. forces deploying more extensively in support of the Iraqi army, federal police and CTS can now be seen very close to the front lines.

U.S. forces located south of Mosul fired HIMARS vehicle-mounted rockets at Islamic State targets in a northern district on Friday.

The commander of the U.S.-led coalition backing Iraqi troops said this week the army and security forces had recently improved their coordination and were gaining momentum after advances had slowed in some areas in the first two months.

Islamic State forces swept into control of a third of Iraq when the army abandoned its positions and fled two years ago. But the Iraqi government says its security forces have since been rebuilt and have proven themselves in battles to recapture the lost ground. Prime Minister Abadi praised the Iraqi army on the anniversary of its establishment.

“The Iraqi army today has combat experience it has won in the war against terrorism … and is achieving victories and is clearing cities and villages,” he said in a statement.

‘HEAD OF THE SNAKE’

“The fight against terrorism is in its final round. Our forces … will cut off the head of the snake and clear all of Mosul soon, with God’s help,” Abadi said.

Abadi initially pledged the northern city would be retaken by the end of 2016, but after the offensive slowed he said last month it would take three more months to drive Islamic State from Iraq.

The fighters retreated from villages and towns around Mosul in the early stages of the campaign, but put up fierce resistance inside the city itself, deploying suicide car bombs and snipers, and avoiding retaliation by hiding among civilians, a tactic Baghdad says amounts to using them as human shields.

One resident in the recently recaptured Mithaq district said life was slowly beginning to return, with traders selling food and other supplies on the streets, but that mortar shells fired by Islamic State militants were falling at an increasing rate in the area, and killed several people on Thursday.

Although most Mosul residents have stayed in the city, more than 2,000 a day are fleeing, according to the United Nations, some heading for increasingly crowded camps in the surrounding countryside.

Islamic State has meanwhile launched attacks elsewhere in the country in what could be a taste of the tactics it will resort to once it loses Mosul.

Militants attacked an Iraqi army outpost and a police station near the city of Tikrit on Friday, killing at least four soldiers and wounding 12 others, military and police sources said.

The militants used a car bomb and two suicide attackers in their assault shortly after midnight on the army outpost in the town of al-Dour on Tikrit’s outskirts, killing two officers and two soldiers, the sources said.

Gunmen separately attacked the police station a short distance away and set fire to the building before fleeing the area. There were no casualties from that attack, the sources said.

A series of bomb attacks in Baghdad in recent days, some claimed by Islamic State, have killed scores of people.

Iraqi forces meanwhile pushed IS militants back in an area northwest of Baghdad towards the Syrian border, military sources said, in a separate, smaller operation launched on Thursday and part of the wider fight against the group in Anbar province.

They encountered little resistance from the militants, who withdrew towards Aneh, around 50 km northwest of the town of Haditha, the sources said.

(Reporting by Isabel Coles, Saif Hameed and Stephen Kalin; writing by John Davison; editing by Peter Graff)