REUTERS - Iraqi forces
will resume their push against Islamic State inside Mosul in the coming days, a
U.S. battlefield commander said, in a new phase of the two-month-
old operation
that will see American troops deployed closer to the front line in the city.
The battle for
Mosul, involving 100,000 Iraqi troops, members of the Kurdish security forces
and Shi'ite militiamen, is the biggest ground operation in Iraq since the
U.S.-led invasion of 2003. The upcoming phase appears likely to give American
troops their biggest combat role since they fulfilled President Barack Obama's
pledge to withdraw from Iraq in 2011.
Elite Iraqi
soldiers have retaken a quarter of Mosul, the jihadists' last major stronghold
in Iraq, but their advance has been slow and punishing. They entered a planned
"operational refit" this month, the first significant pause of the
campaign.
A heavily
armoured unit of several thousand federal police was redeployed from the
southern outskirts two weeks ago to reinforce the eastern front after army
units advised by the Americans suffered heavy losses in an Islamic State
counter-attack.
U.S. advisers,
part of an international coalition that has conducted thousands of air strikes
and trained tens of thousands of Iraqi ground troops, will work directly with
those forces and an elite Interior Ministry strike force.
"Right
now we're staging really for the next phase of the attack as we start the
penetration into the interior of east Mosul," Lieutenant Colonel Stuart
James, commander of a combat arms battalion assisting Iraqi security forces on
the southeastern front, said in a Reuters interview late on Sunday.
"So right
now, positioning forces and positioning men and equipment into the interior of
east Mosul... it's going to happen in the next several days."
That will put
U.S. troops inside of Mosul proper and at greater risk, though James said the
danger level was still characterized as "moderate". Three U.S.
servicemen have been killed in northern Iraq in the past 15 months.
James,
speaking from an austere outpost east of Mosul where several hundred U.S.
troops are stationed, said the pace of the upcoming phase on the eastern side
would depend on resistance from Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or
Daesh.
"If we
achieve great success on the first day and we gain momentum, then it may go
very quickly. If Daesh fights very hard the first day and we run into a
roadblock and we have to go back and go OK that was not the correct point of
penetration, it may take longer," he said.
INTEGRATION
Further
integration with the Iraqi troops - to what commanders described as an
unprecedented level for conventional U.S. forces - will help synchronize
surveillance, air support and force movement, according to James.
"It
increases our situational understanding. The man on the ground knows what's
going on best," he said. "It's just better when they're on the ground
talking to each other and saying, 'Hey, have you looked at that area over
there? That's decisive terrain. Have you thought about putting forces there?'"
Mosul, the
largest city held by Islamic State anywhere across its once vast territorial
holdings in Iraq and neighboring Syria, has been held by the group since its
fighters drove the U.S.-trained army out in June 2014.
Its fall would
probably end Islamic State's ambition to rule over millions of people in a
self-styled caliphate, but the fighters could still mount a traditional
insurgency in Iraq, and plot or inspire attacks on the West.
A multi-ethnic
city where up to 1.5 million people of a pre-war population of around 2 million
are still thought to be living, Mosul is divided roughly in half by the Tigris
River. The western section, which Iraqi forces have yet to penetrate, has
built-up markets and ancient narrow alleyways which will complicate future
advances.
Iraqi Prime
Minister Haider al-Abadi had said he would win Mosul back by the end of this
year, a deadline now certain to be missed. His commanders say their advance was
held up by the need to protect civilians, fewer of whom fled than initially
expected.
Inclement
weather has repeatedly delayed ground advances which rely heavily on aerial
surveillance and air strikes.
REUTERS
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