Daesh puts up tough resistance as elite Iraqi forces push into Mosul

Mosul: Elite Iraqi forces in tanks and bulldozers thrust into Mosul on Friday but faced intense gunfire and bombs from terrorists defending the city where their “caliphate” was born.

Soldiers of the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) pushed into the eastern neighbourhood of Al Karamah, the first significant incursion into the city since a broad offensive to retake it began on October 17.

The CTS’s ‘Mosul regiment,’ which was the last to leave the city when the terrorists overran it in June 2014, faced “tough resistance”, commander Muntadhar Salem told an AFP reporter on the edge of the city.

The gunfire was almost uninterrupted and reports from the front crackling into CTS radios said Daesh had set up barriers and laid bombs along the streets to slow the advance.

Air strikes by the US-led coalition have intensified over the past two days to prepare for the advance, despite the smoke from burning tyres set on fire by Daesh in a bid to provide cover.

The resistance in Al Karamah came despite widespread reports in recent weeks that top Daesh commanders had left the eastern side of the city and crossed the Tigris river to regroup on its west bank.

An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 Daesh fighters are scattered across the sprawling city, Iraq’s second largest, where a million-plus civilians are believed to be trapped.

UN human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said on Friday that Daesh terrorists have killed hundreds of people, including 50 deserters and 180 former Iraqi government employees, around Mosul.

They also transported 1,600 people from the town of Hammam Al Alil to Tal Afar, possibly for use as human shields against air strikes, and told some they may be taken to Syria. They also took 150 families from Hammam Al Alil to Mosul on Wednesday.

Militants told residents of Hammam Al Alil that they must hand over their children, especially boys above the age of nine, in an apparent recruitment drive for child soldiers, she said.

Daesh terrorists were holding nearly 400 Kurdish, Yazidi and Shiite women in Tal Afar, and had possibly killed up to 200 people in Mosul city, she said.

The UN also had reports of air strikes causing civilian deaths, including one on Wednesday evening that reportedly killed four women and injured 17 other civilians in the Al Qudus neighbourhood in eastern Mosul.

There has been an exodus of civilians from outlying villages this week but few managed to find a safe way out of the city itself.

Umm Ali couldn’t hold back her tears when she spoke of her constant fear that the terrorists would take her young sons.

“They kept coming to our home. Sometimes they’d knock on the door at 10pm,” she said. “They took our car, saying: ‘This is the land of the caliphate, it belongs to us’.”

Civilians seeking refuge in Kurdish-controlled areas east of the city recounted tales of Daesh brutality.

“We’re coming from the world of the dead back to the world of the living,” said Raed Ali, 40, who fled his home in the nearby village of Bazwaya.

In a rare audio message released on Thursday, Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi urged his fighters to defend the city where he proclaimed the “caliphate” in June 2014.

But his “caliphate” has been shrinking steadily since mid-2015 and the loss of Mosul would leave Raqa, in Syria, as the group’s only major urban stronghold.

Daesh has been increasingly pragmatic in its tactics this year, falling back in the face of superior force even in some of its emblematic bastions such as Fallujah in Iraq and Dabiq in Syria.

However Al Baghdadi, in his first message of 2016, called on Daesh fighters still in Mosul to make a stand for Iraq’s second city.

“Holding your ground with honour is a thousand times easier than retreating in shame,” he said.

Aymenn Al Tamimi, a terrorism expert at the Middle East Forum said the tone of the half-hour speech was “very much of a caliphate on the defensive”.

Iraqi forces and their Iranian and US-led coalition allies see the battle for Mosul as capping a two-year recovery from the rout that saw Daesh sweep through the Sunni Arab heartland north and west of Baghdad.

As they regained ground and the caliphate declined, defections from Daesh ranks increased, providing intelligence that enabled coalition aircraft to take out key field commanders.

Daesh has continued to post propaganda video from Mosul, the latest of which showed a busy market area and cars stopping at traffic lights.

With colder weather setting in, concern has grown for the the city’s civilian population.

Aid groups say that up to a million people could seek to flee as soon as they can but shelter is available for only a fraction of that number.

The United Nations says it has received credible reports of Daesh forcing tens of thousands of civilians into Mosul from outlying areas for use as “human shields”.