Iraqi forces push towards airport in bitter battle to retake west Mosul
Iraqi government forces are targeting Mosul airport as they launch a long-awaited offensive to retake the western part of the city, the Islamic State group's last major stronghold in the country.
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Advancing from several directions, the US-backed forces captured several villages on Sunday as they moved towards Mosul airport just south of the city.
Speaking on state TV, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said government forces were moving to "liberate the people of Mosul from [IS group] oppression and terrorism forever."
The jihadist group, which was driven out of eastern Mosul last month, has put up stiff resistance to defend the city, where its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed a "caliphate" straddling Iraq and Syria in 2014.
Experts warned that the battle to free western Mosul could prove even tougher than the gruelling four-month fight to liberate the east of the city.
The half of the city west of the Tigris River has older, narrower streets and is still heavily populated.
"West Mosul had the potential certainly of being more difficult, with house-to-house fighting on a larger and more bloody scale," said Patrick Skinner from the Soufan Group intelligence consultancy.
‘A tough fight for any army in the world’
The government began the offensive to reconquer Mosul on October 17, throwing tens of thousands of men into the operation with air and ground support from a coalition that includes the US and France.
"The US forces continue in the same role they were in in east Mosul and the coalition forces are in support of this operation," US Defence Secretary James Mattis told reporters during a trip to the United Arab Emirates.
More than half of the 9,000-plus coalition forces deployed in Iraq are American, and some were visible on the front line Sunday.
The coalition said it carried out a total of 40 air strikes over the weekend, nine of which hit targets in the Mosul area.
"Mosul would be a tough fight for any army in the world," the commander of the US-led coalition forces, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, said in a statement.
Civilians trapped
United Nations officials have voiced concern about the welfare of the estimated 650,000 civilians still trapped in the city.
Leaflets warning residents of the imminent offensive were dropped over western neighbourhoods ahead of the offensive.
"We are racing against the clock to prepare emergency sites south of Mosul to receive displaced families," the UN's humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, Lise Grande, said in a statement.
Save the Children urged all parties to protect the estimated 350,000 children currently trapped in west Mosul.
"This is the grim choice for children in western Mosul right now: bombs, crossfire and hunger if they stay -- or execution and snipers if they try to run," said the charity's Iraq director, Maurizio Crivallero.
Recent incidents in the recaptured east point to the difficulty of ensuring IS group remnants have not blended in with the civilian population.
Crumbing ‘Caliphate’
The jihadists overran Mosul and swathes of other territory north and west of Baghdad in 2014, routing security forces ill-prepared to face the assault.
Prime Minister Abadi said at the beginning of the year that three more months were needed to rid the country of the IS group.
The recapture of Mosul would effectively end the jihadist outfit's days as a land-holding force in Iraq, with only a pocket around the town of Hawijah and small towns near the Syria border still under its control.
An alliance of Arab and Kurdish forces also backed by the coalition is currently advancing on Raqqa in Syria, the only other major hub the jihadists still hold in their now crumbling "caliphate".
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, REUTERS)
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