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Iraqi forces push deeper into western Mosul as civilians flee

By our correspondents
February 26, 2017

MOSUL, Iraq: US-backed Iraqi forces pushed deeper into western Mosul on Saturday, advancing in several populated southern districts after punching through the defences of Islamic State’s last major urban stronghold in Iraq a day earlier.

About 1,000 civilians walked across the frontlines, the largest movement since the new offensive launched last week to deal the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim group a decisive blow.

In the capital Baghdad, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir met Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in the first such visit in more than a decade between Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

The new push in Mosul comes after government forces finished clearing Islamic State from the east of the city last month, confining the insurgents to the western sector across the Tigris river.

Commanders expect the battle there to be more difficult, in part because tanks and armoured vehicles cannot pass through the narrow alleyways that crisscross ancient districts.

But Iraqi forces have so far made quick advances on multiple fronts, capturing the northern city’s airport on Thursday, which they plan to use as a support zone, and breaching a three-metre high berm and trench set up by Islamic State.

The advancing forces are less than three kilometres from the mosque where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate spanning Iraq and Syria in 2014, sparking an international military campaign to defeat the group.

Losing Mosul would likely deal a hammer blow to the militants’ dream of statehood, but they still control territory in Syria and patches of northern and western Iraq from where they could fight a guerrilla-style insurgency in Iraq, and plot attacks on the West.

Federal police and an elite Interior Ministry unit known as Rapid Response have recaptured Hawi al-Josaq along the river and begun clearing the Tayyaran district north of the airport, said Brigadier General Hisham Abdul Kadhim. Islamic State resisted with snipers and roadside bombs, he said.

A Reuters correspondent saw two militants’ corpses outside a mosque in Josaq.

Counter-terrorism forces also pushed on two fronts towards Wadi Hajr and Mamoun districts, said Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al-Saadi, a senior commander.

"Clearing operations are ongoing and our forces have entered those areas," he told Reuters on a hill overlooking the battle.

Saadi said a suicide car bomb had been destroyed before reaching its target. The militants also launched mortars.

A Mamoun resident reached by phone said militant fighters had flooded the area in recent days while moving their families to relative safety in other districts. Islamic State broadcast messages via mosque loudspeakers in some areas encouraging locals to resist the "infidels’ attack" while elsewhere they threatened to kill anyone who refused to retreat deeper into the city, according to several residents.

A woman forced to leave Wadi Hajr district said the militants had climbed to her roof and knocked holes in the walls in order to move undetected.

Several thousand militants, including many who travelled from Western countries to join up, are believed to be holed up in the city with practically nowhere to go, which could lead to a fierce standoff amid a population of 750,000.

Ziyad, a 16-year-old living in Hawi al-Josaq, told a Reuters correspondent he had seen foreign IS militants withdraw as Iraqi forces advanced, leaving only local fighters behind.