REUTERS - The Iraqi army said
it took full control of two more districts of east Mosul on Saturday, pushing
back Islamic State militants in a slow and hard-fought advance
into the city
whose 1 million residents face growing shortages of fuel, water and food.
A military statement
said elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) troops took over the neighborhoods
of al-Murour and al-Qadisiya al-Oula, expanding their area of control in the
east of the city.
Despite the reported
advance, the army's progress in Mosul remains painstakingly slow, facing brutal
counter attacks from the hugely outnumbered but well prepared and heavily armed
jihadists who have controlled the city since mid-2104.
In an attempt to change
the dynamics of the grinding seven-week campaign, troops from an armored
division punched their way deeper into the city on Tuesday in an attack on a
hospital believed to be used as a military base by Islamic State.
They were forced to
withdraw from the complex after a ferocious counter-attack by Islamic State
fighters, who deployed at least six suicide car bombs, although residents said
the army was able to hold some territory nearby.
The CTS, which has
spearheaded the fighting in Mosul since it broke through Islamic State defenses
in the eastern outskirts in late October, controls half of the eastern bank of
the city which is split by the Tigris running through its center.
Sabah al-Numani,
spokesman for the CTS forces, told Iraqi television they had reached within 3
or 4 km (2 miles) of the Tigris, and hoped to take the remaining districts of
the east bank "with the same speed" they had achieved so far.
That would imply
full control of the eastern half of the city would not be accomplished before late
January, missing Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's target of recapturing the
whole city by the end of the year.
Iraqi commanders
have talked about relieving pressure on CTS troops in the east by opening a new
front in southwest Mosul, where federal police units are stationed just outside
the city.
However, officers
say three brigades from the police forces were being moved from south of Mosul
towards the east bank, so they could directly reinforce the offensive there.
They were expected
to arrive on Saturday, an army officer said, and would be tasked with driving
Islamic State out the Wahda neighborhood where the Salam hospital - the target
of Tuesday's assault - is located.
WINTER CRISIS
Defeating Islamic
State in the largest city under its control would deal a major blow to its
self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria, and its ambitions to govern territory.
In Iraq, it has
already been forced to retreat from Tikrit, Ramadi and Falluja, although its
ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim fighters still hold large parts of remote, Sunni
regions near the Syrian border, and an area of land southeast of Mosul.
But the slow
progress in Mosul has raised fears among residents and aid groups that the city
will forced to endure siege-like conditions for several months.
With winter setting
in and the city effectively sealed off by the army and its allies from all
directions, humanitarian problems are escalating.
United Nations
agencies who distributed aid inside recaptured eastern areas for the first time
on Thursday were almost overrun by residents suffering acute shortages of food,
fuel and water, and often trapped for days at home by fighting.
Iraqi police had to
fire in the air and threaten to whip crowds with a hose to maintain order.
Residents in areas
still controlled by Islamic State say food prices have risen and the cost of
fuel has tripled.
"Certainly
inside Mosul there is a big need for medical and humanitarian assistance,"
an aid worker who has recently returned from the Mosul area told Reuters.
"What we have
no idea of today is the state of medical structures in Mosul and the precise
needs of the population."
In addition to the
food and fuel shortages, water supplies to large parts of Mosul were cut off
two weeks ago when a pipeline was hit during fighting, a local official said.
Authorities have
tried to ease shortages by sending dozens of water trucks a day to
neighborhoods under army control.
REUTERS
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