Tag Archives: Mosul

Islamic State tightens grip on village near Mosul after defeat

Iraqi Federal Police celebrate in the Old City of Mosul. REUTERS/Ahmed Saad

By Ghazwan Hassan

TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) – Islamic State has captured most of a village south of Mosul despite losing control of its stronghold in the city, an Iraqi army officer and residents said, deploying guerrilla-style tactics as its self-proclaimed caliphate crumbles.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over Islamic State in Mosul on Monday, marking the biggest defeat for the hardline Sunni group since its lightning sweep through northern Iraq three years ago.

But the militants, armed with machine guns and mortars, have now seized more than 75 percent of Imam Gharbi, a village on the western bank of the Tigris river some 70 km (44 miles) south of Mosul, and reinforcements are expected, the Iraqi army officer said.

Islamic State launched its attack on Imam Gharbi last week, in the kind of strike it is expected to deploy now as U.S.-backed Iraqi forces regain control over cities the group captured during its shock 2014 offensive.

Mosul resident Hind Mahmoud said by telephone that she had heard exchanges of gunfire in the Old City and seen an Iraqi army helicopter firing on Islamic State militants on Tuesday.

Stripped of Mosul, Islamic State’s dominion in Iraq will be reduced to mainly rural, desert areas west and south of the city.

Islamic State also faces pressure in its operational base in the Syrian city of Raqqa, where U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish and Arab forces have seized territory on three sides of the city.

The campaign to retake Mosul from the militants was launched last October by a 100,000-strong alliance of Iraqi government units, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shi’ite militias, with a U.S.-led coalition providing key air and ground support.

Abadi’s government in Iraq now faces a difficult task managing the sectarian tensions which enabled Islamic State to gain supporters in the country among fellow Sunnis, who say they were marginalized by the Shi’ite-led government.

The U.S.-led coalition warned that victory in Mosul did not mark the end of the group’s global threat.

“Now it is time for all Iraqis to unite to ensure ISIS (Islamic State) is defeated across the rest of Iraq and that the conditions that led to the rise of ISIS in Iraq are not allowed to return again,” Lieutenant General Stephen J. Townsend said in a statement.

(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Iraqi PM declares victory over Islamic State in Mosul

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi (C) holds an Iraqi flag as he announces victory over Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq, July 10, 2017. Iraqi Prime Minister Media Office/Handout via REUTERS

By Isabel Coles and Stephen Kalin

MOSUL/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraq’s prime minister declared victory over Islamic State in Mosul on Monday, three years after the militants seized the city and made it the stronghold of a “caliphate” they said would take over the world.

“I announce from here the end and the failure and the collapse of the terrorist state of falsehood and terrorism which the terrorist Daesh announced from Mosul,” Haider al-Abadi said in a speech shown on state television, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

A 100,000-strong alliance of Iraqi government units, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shi’ite militias launched the offensive to recapture the northern city from the militants in October, with key air and ground support from a U.S.-led coalition.

Abadi, wearing a black military uniform and flanked by commanders from the security forces, thanked troops and the coalition. But he warned that more challenges lay ahead.

“We have another mission ahead of us, to create stability, to build and clear Daesh cells, and that requires an intelligence and security effort, and the unity which enabled us to fight Daesh,” he said before raising an Iraqi flag.

Iraq declared a week-long holiday to mark the victory. People celebrated in the streets of the capital Baghdad and southern cities.

Abadi arrived in Mosul on Sunday to congratulate military commanders who have waged a nearly nine-month battle to recapture the city, many parts of which were reduced to rubble.

Gunfire and explosions could be heard earlier in the day as the last few Islamic State positions were pounded.

The coalition said in a statement Iraqi forces were in “firm control” of Mosul, but some areas still needed to be cleared of explosive devices and possible Islamic State fighters in hiding.

Around the time of Abadi’s announcement, Islamic State released a statement claiming to have mounted an attack on Iraqi forces in Mosul. Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

Abadi had been meeting military and political officials in Mosul in an atmosphere of celebration that contrasts with the fear that spread after a few hundred Islamic State militants seized the city and the Iraqi army crumbled in July 2014.

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi shocked the Middle East and Western powers three years ago by appearing at the pulpit of Mosul’s Grand al-Nuri Mosque to declare the caliphate and himself the leader of the world’s Muslims.

A reign of terror followed which eventually alienated even many of those Sunni Muslims who had supported the group as allies against Iraq’s Shi’ite majority. Opponents of Islamic State were executed and such crimes as smoking a cigarette were punishable by public whipping.

Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, the Shi’ites have been politically dominant in Iraq but the country has been racked by ethnic conflict.

REVENGE

In the aftermath of victory in Mosul, Abadi’s government faces the task of managing the sectarian tensions there and elsewhere that enabled Islamic State to win support, and the threat of a wave of revenge violence in the city.

The coalition warned that victory in Mosul did not mark the end of the group’s global threat.

“Now it is time for all Iraqis to unite to ensure ISIS (Islamic State) is defeated across the rest of Iraq and that the conditions that led to the rise of ISIS in Iraq are not allowed to return again,” Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend said in a statement.

U.S. President Donald Trump congratulated Iraq and said Islamic State’s days were numbered. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the victory “a critical milestone” in the war against Islamic State.

Baghdadi has fled the city and his whereabouts are unknown. Reports have circulated that he is dead but Iraqi and Western officials say they cannot corroborate this.

His death or capture would not be the end of Islamic State, which still controls areas south and west of Mosul and which is now expected to take to the desert or mountains to wage an insurgency.

The militants are likely to keep trying to launch attacks on the West and inspiring violence by “lone wolves” or small groups of the kind mounted recently in Britain, France and elsewhere.

But the loss of Iraq’s second-largest city is a grave body blow to Islamic State.

Islamic State is also under heavy pressure in its operational headquarters in the Syrian city of Raqqa. But a concern shared by the United States and its coalition allies is that Iran could fill the vacuum left by the Sunni militants to expand in both Iraq and Syria.

Qassem Soleimani, head of the Quds Force, the extraterritorial branch of Shi’ite Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said on Monday Iran had sent “thousands of tonnes” of arms and fighter jets to Iraq to help it fight Islamic State, Iranian media reported.

HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

The stench of corpses along Mosul’s streets was a reminder of the gruelling urban warfare required to dislodge Islamic State.

Much of the city of 1.5 million has been destroyed in the fighting, its centuries-old stone buildings flattened by air strikes and other explosions. One of Islamic State’s last acts was to blow up the historic al-Nuri mosque and its famous leaning minaret.

Thousands of people have been killed. The United Nations says 920,000 civilians have fled their homes since the military campaign began in October. Close to 700,000 people are still displaced.

“It’s a relief to know that the military campaign in Mosul is ending. The fighting may be over, but the humanitarian crisis is not,” said U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq Lise Grande.”Many of the people who have fled have lost everything. They need shelter, food, health care, water, sanitation and emergency kits. The levels of trauma we are seeing are some of the highest anywhere. What people have experienced is nearly unimaginable.”

Iraqi soldiers relaxed. Some swam in the Tigris river which runs through the city. One wiped the sweat from his face with an Islamic State flag.

(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Andrew Roche)

U.S. foreign chief Tillerson arrives in Gulf for talks on Qatar crisis

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson makes a speech during the opening ceremony of the 22nd World Petroleum Congress in Istanbul, Turkey, July 9,

By Jonathan Landay and Tom Finn

ISTANBUL/DOHA (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived in Kuwait on Monday for talks aimed at resolving the crisis triggered by the the cutoff of links with Qatar by Saudi Arabia and Arab allies allies.

In Doha, a Western diplomat said creation of a “terror finance monitoring mechanism” would feature in the talks, but declined to elaborate. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE and Egypt imposed sanctions last month, accusing Doha of aiding terrorism, something it denies.

The State Department said Tillerson, who forged extensive ties in the Gulf as CEO of ExxonMobil, would hold talks with leaders in Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

He was flying from Istanbul where he attended an international petroleum conference.

R.C. Hammond, a senior adviser to Tillerson, said he would explore ways to end a stalemate following Qatar’s rejection of 13 demands issued as condition for ending sanctions.

“The trips to Saudi Arabia and Qatar are about the art of the possible,” said Hammond, who added that the 13 demands “are done” and “are not worth revisiting as a package. Individually there are things in there that could work”.

The demands included the closing of Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based pan-Arab television network, and a Turkish military base in Qatar. Saudi Arabia and its backers, which accuse Al Jazeera of being a platform for extremists and an agent of interference in their affairs, have threatened further sanctions against the emirate. Al Jazeera denies the allegations.

Riyadh and its allies accuse Qatar of financing extremist groups and allying with Iran, the Gulf Arab states’ regional rival. Qatar denies that it supports militant organizations, and many experts see the blockade as an attempt by Saudi Arabia to rein in Qatar’s increasingly independent foreign policy.

 

TWO-WAY STREET

The crisis has hit travel, food imports to Qatar, ratcheted up tensions in the Gulf and sown confusion among businesses, while pushing Qatar closer to Iran and Turkey which have offered support.

The United States worries the crisis could affect its military and counter-terrorism operations and increase the regional influence of Tehran, which has been supporting Qatar by allowing it to use air and sea links through its territory.

Qatar hosts Udeid Air Base, the largest U.S. military facility in the Middle East, from which U.S.-led coalition aircraft stage sorties against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed support for Saudi Arabia in the dispute.

Hammond said it was critical that not only Qatar, but Riyadh and its allies take steps to halt any financial support flowing to extremists groups, especially following the defeat of Islamic State in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

“It’s a two-way street,” he said. “There are no clean hands here.”

“We want progress on terrorism financing. The president strongly believes that if you cut off financing, you cut off the ability of terror to take hold in new areas,” Hammond said.

Moreover, he said, “the longer that this struggle is in place, the more opportunity there is for Iran.”

 

(Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

 

Iraqi PM formally declares victory over Islamic State in Mosul

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi (C) holds an Iraqi flag as he announces victory over Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq, July 10, 2017. Iraqi Prime Minister Media

MOSUL (Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi formally declared victory over Islamic State in the city of Mosul on Monday, marking the biggest defeat for the group since it declared a caliphate three years ago.

“I announce from here the end and the failure and the collapse of the terrorist state of falsehood and terrorism which the terrorist Daesh announced from Mosul,” he said in a speech shown on state television, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

The fall of Mosul effectively marks the end of the Iraqi half of the Islamic State caliphate, which also includes territory in Syria. The group still controls territory west and south of the city.

A 100,000-strong coalition of Iraqi government units, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shi’ite militias launched the offensive to recapture the city from the militants in October, with key air and ground support from a U.S.-led coalition.

Abadi, wearing a black military uniform and flanked by commanders from the security forces, thanked troops and the coalition. But he warned that more challenges lay ahead.

“We have another mission ahead of us, to create stability, to build and clear Daesh cells and that requires an intelligence and security effort, and the unity which enabled us to fight Daesh,” he said before raising an Iraqi flag.

About 900,000 residents have been displaced by the fighting, and thousands of civilians are believed to have been killed.

The whereabouts of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who announced the founding of the caliphate from Mosul three years ago, is not clear.

There have been several unconfirmed claims of his death. U.S. and Iraqi military sources say he may be hiding in the border area between Iraq and Syria.

 

(Reporting by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Michael Georgy and Andrew Roche)

 

Old City bears the brunt of Islamic State’s last stand in Mosul

An old bridge destroyed by clashes is seen in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq July 10, 2017

By Stephen Kalin

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Piles of concrete and metal rubble reach up to the second story of surrounding buildings in parts of the historic quarter where Islamic State is making its last stand in Mosul.

Soldiers passing through the narrow alleyways and abandoned homes of the Old City on Sunday scrambled over stone blocks, reinforced steel poles and sheets of aluminum to inspect the military’s latest gains while their comrades fought on nearby.

Charred bodies, mostly covered with blankets, lay amid the rubble. A man’s hand stuck out from under one cover, another’s dusty feet extended from another. Some were clearly militants but others looked like civilians, including a woman and a child.

As the nearly nine-month U.S.-backed offensive to retake Mosul draws to an end, the Old City has been among the hardest hit areas by the house-to-house fighting backed by air strikes, artillery and heavy machine guns to uproot the insurgents who have resisted with suicide bomb attacks.

The riverside district, whose mosques, churches and markets date to the Medieval Ages and even earlier, were long neglected before Islamic State took over in 2014.

The insurgents have blown up several landmarks there including the iconic Hadba minaret and its adjoining Grand Nuri Mosque, where leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed a modern-day “caliphate” three years ago.

Several hundred militants were holed up in the Old City among tens of thousands of civilians when Iraqi forces breached the area last month.

Those numbers have dwindled, with a few dozen militants maintaining resistance as Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi traveled to Mosul to declare victory.

Moments before his arrival on Sunday, a half dozen air strikes pounded the last pocket of the city where the insurgents are gathered. The blasts sent unidentified fragments toward the sky including what appeared to be an Islamic State flag.

The explosions, mixed with sporadic gunfire, continued on Monday as Abadi met with local officials.

 

CLEARING RUBBLE

Soldiers combing the ruins passed a hole knocked into the side of a building, revealing a relatively intact living room, with cushioned chairs and a couch covered in dust.

Another small room was furnished with foam sleeping mats and scattered with food scraps, indicating it was recently inhabited by retreating insurgents or advancing soldiers, or possibly both in quick succession.

The soldiers walked through a burnt-out elementary school and an outdoor basketball court where a mural painted on one wall bears the adage: “Cleanliness is part of faith”.

A bulldozer was already clearing rubble in an open area nearby. In another section of the Old City with broader streets and taller buildings, federal police dot a moonscape scene.

Storefronts were gutted, a six-storey apartment block had collapsed in on itself and a two-storey home was knocked off its foundations and leaned on its side.

Smoke rises from clashes in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq July 10, 2017. REUTERS/Thaier

Smoke rises from clashes in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq July 10, 2017. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

The police showed off explosive vests they found alongside the militants, who they said were of Asian origin. They said they still had to clear tunnels running underneath the Old City to make sure Islamic State fighters were not hiding there.

While some Mosul districts were only lightly affected by the battle, nearly a third of western neighborhood have been heavily damaged according to the United Nations, which estimates it will take more than $1 billion and at least a year just to repair restore basic services to the entire city.

A soldier returning from the front on Sunday unfurled a black Islamic State flag, holding it upside down and posing for pictures. He boasted it is the last of its kind in Mosul.

In reality, military officials say Islamic State has set up sleeper cells across the city and that they are working to prevent a new wave of guerrilla-style attacks as the group goes to ground.

 

(Editing by Philippa Fletcher)

 

Mosul victory imminent as Islamic State lines collapse: Iraqi military

Members of the Emergency Response Division celebrate in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq July 8, 2017. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

By Stephen Kalin and Maher Chmaytelli

MOSUL/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi security forces expect to take full control of Mosul within hours as Islamic State’s defensive lines crumble in its former de facto capital in Iraq, military commanders said on Saturday.

Dozens of soldiers celebrated amid the rubble on the banks of the Tigris river without waiting for a formal victory declaration, some dancing to music blaring out from a truck and firing machineguns into the air, a Reuters correspondent said.

The mood was less festive, however, among some of the nearly one million Mosul residents displaced by months of combat, many of whom are living in camps outside the city with little respite from the blazing summer heat.

“If there is no rebuilding and people don’t return to their homes and regain their belongings, what is the meaning of liberation?” Mohammed Haji Ahmed, 43, a clothing trader, told Reuters in the Hassan Sham camp to the east of Mosul.

“We are seeing now the last meters (yards) and then final victory will be announced,” a television presenter said, citing the channel’s correspondents embedded with security forces fighting in Islamic State’s (IS) redoubt in the Old City of Mosul, by the Tigris. “It’s a matter of hours,” she said.

A U.S.-led international coalition is providing air and ground support to the eight-month campaign to wrest back Mosul, by far the largest city seized by Islamic State in 2014.

Almost exactly three years ago, the ultra-hardline group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared from Mosul a “caliphate” over adjoining parts of Iraq and Syria.

ARTILLERY EXPLOSIONS, GUNFIRE

A military spokesman cited by the TV said the insurgents’ defense lines were collapsing. Iraqi commanders say the militants were fighting for every meter with snipers, grenades and suicide bombers, forcing security forces to fight house-to-house in the densely populated maze of narrow alleyways.

Dozens of insurgents were killed on Saturday and others tried to escape by swimming across Tigris, state TV said.

“The battle has reached the phase of chasing the insurgents in remaining blocks,” the Iraqi military media office said in a statement. “Some members of Daesh have surrendered,” it added, using an Arab acronym of Islamic State.

Artillery explosions and gunfire could still be heard during Saturday afternoon and a column of smoke billowed over the Old City riverside, the Reuters correspondent said.

The road where the soldiers celebrated was scarred with gaping holes from explosions and rubble from a flattened multi-storey shopping mall. Rubbish and ammunition boxes were strewn around and there was no sign of civilians.

Months of urban warfare has displaced 900,000 people, about half the city’s pre-war population, and killed thousands, according to aid organizations.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared the end of Islamic State’s “state of falsehood” a week ago, after security forces took Mosul’s medieval Grand al-Nuri mosque – although only after retreating militants blew it up.

Stripped of Mosul, Islamic State’s dominion in Iraq will be reduced to mainly rural, desert areas west and south of the city where tens of thousands of people live. The militants are expected to keep up attacks on selected targets across Iraq.

The United Nations predicts it will cost more than $1 billion to repair basic infrastructure in Mosul. In some of the worst affected areas, almost no buildings appear to have escaped damage and Mosul’s dense construction means the extent of the devastation might be underestimated, U.N. officials said.

The fall of Mosul also exposes ethnic and sectarian fractures between Arabs and Kurds over disputed territories or between Sunnis and the Shi’ite majority that have plagued Iraq for more than a decade..

During their impromptu victory celebrations, some of the Iraqi soldiers waved pictures of Hussein, the grand son of prophet Mohammed who is immensely revered by the Shi’ites.

Mosul is a majority Sunni city who has long complained of being marginalized by the Shi’ite-led governments installed after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Meanwhile, Iraq’s regional Kurdish leader said this week that the government in Baghdad had failed to prepare a post-battle political, security and governance plan.

(Additional reporting by Isabel Coles in Hassan Sham camp; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Helen Popper)

Facing defeat in Mosul, Islamic State mounts diversionary attack to the south

Members of Iraqi federal police carry their weapons during fighting with Islamic State militants in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Ahmed Saad

MOSUL/TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) – Islamic State militants attacked a village south of Mosul, killing several people including two journalists, even as they were about to lose their last redoubt in the city to an Iraqi military onslaught, security sources said on Friday.

The assault on Imam Gharbi village appeared to be the sort of diversionary, guerrilla-style strike tactics Islamic State is expected to focus on as U.S.-backed Iraqi forces regain control over cities IS captured in a shock 2014 offensive.

Security sources said IS insurgents had infiltrated Imam Gharbi, some 70 km (44 miles) south of Mosul on the western bank of the Tigris river, on Wednesday evening from a pocket of territory still under their control on the eastern bank.

Two Iraqi journalists were reported killed and two others wounded as they covered the security forces’ counter-attack to take back the village on Friday. An unknown number of civilians and military were also killed or wounded in the clashes.

In Mosul, IS clung to a slowly shrinking pocket on the Tigris west bank, battling for every meter with snipers, grenades and suicide bombers, forcing security forces to fight house-to-house in densely-populated blocks.

The Iraqi military has forecast final victory this week in what used to be the de facto capital of IS’s “caliphate” in Iraq, after a grinding eight-month, U.S.-backed offensive to wrest back the city, whose pre-war population was 2 million.

But security forces faced ferocious resistance from roughly several hundred militants hunkered down among thousands of civilians in the maze of alleyways in Mosul’s Old City.

Air strikes and artillery salvoes continued to pound Islamic State’s last Mosul bastion on Friday, a Reuters TV crew said.

Mosul was by far the largest city seized by Islamic State in its offensive three years ago where the ultra-hardline group declared its “caliphate” over adjoining parts of Iraq and Syria.

ASYMMETRIC ATTACKS

Stripped of Mosul, IS’s dominion in Iraq will be reduced to mainly rural, desert areas west and south of the city where tens of thousands of people live, and the militants are expected to keep up asymmetric attacks on selected targets across Iraq.

Adhel Abu Ragheef, a Baghdad-based expert on jihadist groups, said Islamic State was likely to carry out “more of these raid-type attacks on security forces to try to divert them away from the main battle”, now in Mosul and then in other areas west of Mosul including near the Syrian border still IS control.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared the end of Islamic State’s “state of falsehood” a week ago, after security forces took Mosul’s mediaeval Grand al-Nuri mosque – although only after retreating militants blew it up.

Months of grinding urban warfare in Mosul have displaced 900,000 people, about half the city’s pre-war population, and killed thousands, according to aid organizations.

The United Nations predicts it will cost more than $1 billion to repair basic infrastructure in Mosul. Iraq’s regional Kurdish leader said on Thursday in a Reuters interview that the Baghdad central government had failed to prepare a post-battle political, security and governance plan.

The offensive has damaged thousands of structures in Mosul’s Old City and destroyed nearly 500 buildings, satellite imagery released by the United Nations on Thursday showed.

In some of the worst affected areas, almost no buildings appear to have escaped damage, and Mosul’s dense construction means the extent of the devastation might be underestimated, U.N. officials said.

(Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Islamic State makes desperate stand in Mosul, commanders say

Military vehicle of Iraqi security forces are seen during fighting between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq July 6, 2017. REUTERS/Ahmed Saad

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Islamic State fighters holding out in Mosul on a strip of land along the Tigris River are increasingly using suicide bombers in a desperate attempt to slow the steady advance of Iraqi forces, military commanders said on Thursday.

Iraqi forces pushing toward the al-Maydan and al-Shareen districts in the northern Iraqi city broke the militants’ defenses and have reached within 200 meters (yards) of the riverbank.

But they encountered stiff resistance from a few hundred militants lodged among thousands of civilians in the Old City’s maze of alleyways, particularly from foreign suicide bombers, Iraqi commanders said.

The military has predicted final victory this week after a grinding eight-month assault to oust Islamic State from the once two-million-strong city.

Mosul is by far the largest city ruled by Islamic State. It was here, three years ago, that the group declared the founding of its “caliphate” over parts of Iraq and neighboring Syria.

Lieutenant General Sami Aridhi of the elite counter-terrorism service said Islamic State fighters were increasingly detonating explosives among civilians fleeing toward security forces and had even resorted to using women suicide bombers.

“They have begun to wait for the troops to reach them and then blow themselves up. They can’t do any more than that,” he told state television.

“They surge forward just to obstruct the troops, not to hold land or retain any other positions because God willing their end is clear to everyone and they are convinced that this is their end,” he said.

Once Mosul has gone, Islamic State’s territory in Iraq will be limited to areas west and south of the city where some tens of thousands of civilians live, and it is expected to keep up asymmetric attacks across the country.

Air strikes continued to rain down just beyond the frontline, and wounded soldiers, some displaying blast wounds, were evacuated.

Civilians interviewed on state TV said they had fled al-Maydan district, which is one of a handful of districts along the riverbank still in Islamic State hands.

Prime Minister Haider Abadi declared the end of Islamic State’s “state of falsehood” a week ago, after security forces took Mosul’s medieval Grand al-Nuri mosque.

Months of grinding urban warfare have displaced 900,000 people, about half the city’s pre-war population, and killed thousands, according to aid organizations.

The United Nations predicts it will cost more than $1 billion to repair basic infrastructure in Mosul, while Iraq’s Kurdish leader said on Thursday in a Reuters interview that the Baghdad government had failed to prepare a post-battle political, security and governance plan.

(Reporting By Stephen Kalin; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Mosul population ‘traumatized’ by conflict, infrastructure badly damaged

Destroyed building and cars in the Old City. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

By Stephanie Nebehay and Stephen Kalin

GENEVA/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – The population of Mosul has endured huge suffering in the war to retake the northern Iraqi city from Islamic State and trauma cases among civilians are sharply rising in the last stages of battle, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Wednesday.

The city’s basic infrastructure has also been hard hit, with six western districts almost completely destroyed and initial repairs expected to cost more than $1 billion, the United Nations said.

Tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped among the shattered buildings in Islamic State’s final redoubt in Mosul’s Old City by the western bank of the Tigris river, MSF said.

Civilians who have managed to get medical treatment are suffering from burns and shrapnel and blast injuries, while many are in need of critical care and are under-nourished, MSF officials said.

But there is concern that only a small number of the civilians were getting the medical attention they required.

“Really, (there is) a huge level of human suffering,” Jonathan Henry, MSF emergency coordinator in west Mosul, told reporters in Geneva after spending six weeks in Iraq.

“This is a massive population that has been traumatized from a very brutal and horrific conflict,” he said.

Iraqi commanders have predicted final victory in Mosul this week after a grinding eight-month assault that has pushed Islamic State into a rectangle no more than 300 by 500 meters in the city whose population used to be 2 million.

International charity Save the Children said in a separate report that fighting and years of living under Islamic State have left Mosul’s children with dangerous levels of psychological damage.

Findings from focus group discussions with 65 children in a displacement camp south of Mosul found that children are so deeply scarred by memories of extreme violence they are living in constant fear for their lives, unable to show emotions, and suffering from vivid “waking nightmares”.

Displaced Iraqi civilians who fled from clashes. REUTERS/Stringer

Displaced Iraqi civilians who fled from clashes. REUTERS/Stringer

The loss of loved ones was the biggest cause of distress, with 90 percent reporting the loss of at least one family member through death, separation during their escape, or abduction, the report said.

Children said they had seen family members killed in front of them, dead bodies and blood in the streets, and bombs destroying their homes. Others shared stories of family members shot by snipers, blown up by landmines or hit by explosions as they fled.

The militants’ brutality and the U.S.-backed war to end their three-year rule has created an “extremely traumatic environment for people to flee from and to return to,” affecting their mental health on a large scale, MSF’s Henry said.

“The west (of the city) has been heavily destroyed. It’s really mass destruction … similar to the blitz of the Second World War, hospitals have been destroyed, neighborhoods are in ruins.”

The battles in the Old City’s maze of narrow alleyways is fought house-by-house in streets packed with civilians and planted with multiple explosive devices by the militants, who are also using drones and suicide bombings.

Shrapnel and blast injuries, broken bones from collapsed buildings and burns are the main type of wounds seen by the MSF team of surgeons in west Mosul, Henry said.

Half of the 100 war-wounded over the past two weeks at the MSF 25-bed hospital were women and children in need of critical care and many were malnourished, he said.

“But the most urgent patients we feel are not able to leave the conflict area.”

About 900,000 people have been displaced by the fighting, taking shelter in camps or with relatives and friends, according the aid group.

A tank of the Emergency Response Division fires at Islamic State militant in the old city of Mosul, Iraq July 5, 2017. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

A tank of the Emergency Response Division fires at Islamic State militant in the old city of Mosul, Iraq July 5, 2017. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

(Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Robin Pomeroy)

Desperate civilians flee last Islamic State pocket in Mosul

Displaced Iraqi people who fled from Islamic State militants stand in line for a security check in Mosul, Iraq July 3, 2017. Picture taken July 3, 2017. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

By Stephen Kalin

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Shop-owner Adnan dragged himself from the rubble two days in a row after the houses he was sheltering in were bombed, one after the other, in the U.S.-led campaign to uproot the last Islamic State militants from Mosul.

“Daesh (Islamic State) forced us out of our home, so we moved to a relative’s house nearby. Yesterday the house was bombed,” he said after the army evacuated him on Monday. “We moved to my cousin’s house and this morning it was also bombed.”

Adnan, who has shrapnel lodged in his skull from an earlier mortar attack, said he survived, with others, by hiding in the houses’ underground cellars.

Thousands of people in the last patch of Mosul still controlled by the insurgents have been huddling for weeks in similar conditions, with little food and no electricity. They fear being bombed if they remain in place and being shot by snipers if they try to flee.

Iraqi forces have pushed Islamic State into a shrinking rectangle no more than 300 by 500 meters beside the Tigris river, but slowed their advance on Tuesday out of caution for an estimated 10,000 civilians trapped there alongside the militants.

Residents have been caught in the crossfire – and often intentionally targeted by Islamic State – since the offensive began more than eight months ago. Thousands have been killed and around 900,000 – around half of Mosul’s pre-war population – have been displaced.

Those in the historic Old City, the offensive’s final target, have been besieged and under fire for longer than those in any other part of Mosul, and the toll is apparent.

Children are emerging bone thin and severely dehydrated, elderly people are collapsing en route. In many cases there is nothing to eat besides boiled wheat.

At a mustering point less than a kilometer from the frontline, residents rattled off the latest prices of basic goods which they said had become prohibitively expensive in the past three months: a kilogram of lentils for 60,000 Iraqi dinars ($51), rice for 25,000 and flour for 22,000.

Mohammed Taher, a young man from the Makawi area of the Old City, said Russian-speaking IS fighters spread out across the neighborhood had impeded civilian movement.

“It was a prison,” he said. “Five days ago they locked the door on us. They said, ‘Don’t come out, die inside’. But the army came and freed us.”

A European medic at a field hospital said he has seen more severe trauma cases among civilians fleeing the fighting in the past week than he had in 20 years of service back home.

SCREENING

From the mustering point, camouflaged army trucks carry the evacuees across the Tigris river to a security screening center in the shadow of the Nineveh Oberoi Hotel, a former five-star hotel which Islamic State once used to house foreign fighters and suicide bombers.

More than 4,000 people have passed through that screening center since mid-May, said Lieutenant Colonel Khalid al-Jabouri, who runs the site. In that time, security forces have detained around 400 suspected IS members, he said.

“They are wanted so they cross with the civilians like they are one of them,” he told Reuters. “In order to relieve our country from these pigs, we have to check every person who comes and goes.”

Jabouri pointed out two middle-aged men who intelligence officers had pulled aside from among several dozen others for suspected links to Islamic State. One wore a traditional white robe and black headdress, the other had a shaved head and a bandage on one leg.

“That person is a Daesh member,” he said, pointing at the second man. “He crossed without papers but he is Daesh. He crossed wounded or pretending to be wounded.”

The number of Islamic State militants fighting in Mosul, by far the biggest city it has ever controlled, has dwindled from thousands at the start of the U.S.-backed offensive to a couple of hundred now, according to the Iraqi military.

The security forces rely on a list of names and witness testimonies to identify suspected Islamic State members. Even as the military offensive draws to a close, though, it is clear that some militants have managed to slip through the cracks.

Suspected militants are arrested on a daily basis in Mosul neighborhoods proclaimed “liberated” from Islamic State months ago, and several suicide attacks have already been carried out in those areas.

(Editing by Philippa Fletcher)