Baghdad, Arbil: Iraqi army units advanced from southeast Mosul towards a bridge across the Tigris in the city centre on Tuesday, in an attack that could give fresh impetus to the hard-fought, seven-week battle for Daesh’s northern-Iraq stronghold.
Campaign commander Lieutenant General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah was quoted by Iraqi television as saying that troops had entered Salam Hospital, less than 1.5 km from the Tigris River running through the centre of Mosul.
If confirmed, that would mark a significant advance by the army’s Ninth Armoured Division, which had been tied up for more than a month in deadly, close-quarter combat with Daesh fighters on the southeast edges of the city.
A colonel in the armoured division said Tuesday’s assault, launched at 6am, aimed to push towards the river and ultimately reach Mosul’s Fourth Bridge, the southernmost of the five bridges spanning the Tigris which splits the city in two.
The bridge, like three others, has been hit by US-led air strikes to prevent Daesh sending reinforcements and suicide car bombs across the city to the eastern front, where counter-terrorism troops have spearheaded the army campaign.
The last and oldest bridge, built of iron in the 1930s, was targeted on Monday night, two residents said. The structure was not destroyed, but the air strikes made two large craters in the approach roads on both sides.
Militants immediately began to fill the craters, the residents told Reuters by telephone.
“I saw Daesh using bulldozers to fill the craters with sand and by midday vehicles managed to cross the bridge normally. I drove my car to the other side of the bridge and saw also Daesh vehicles crossing,” said a taxi driver.
Mosul is by far the largest city under Daesh control and defeating its fighters there would roll back the self-styled caliphate it declared in Iraq and Syria 2014 after seizing large parts of both countries.
Some 100,000 Iraqi soldiers, security forces, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and mainly Shiite paramilitary forces are participating in the overall Mosul campaign that began on October 17, with air and ground support from a US-led coalition.
Although it has made advances inside eastern Mosul, the army says it is battling the toughest urban warfare imaginable — facing hundreds of suicide car bomb attacks, mortar barrages, sniper fire and ambushes launched from a network of tunnels. Its advance has also been slowed by the presence of more than 1 million residents in the city.
The army colonel said Tuesday’s offensive aimed to overwhelm the militants, who have put up stiff resistance but are hugely outnumbered by the attacking forces.
“We are using a new tactic — increasing the numbers of advancing forces and also attacking from multiple fronts to take the initiative and prevent Daesh fighters from organising any counter-attacks,” the colonel said by telephone.
