U.S.-backed
Iraqi forces pushed deeper into the last pocket of Mosul controlled by Islamic
State militants on Sunday as the battle for the city approaches an end after
seven months of gruelling urban combat.
The
militants have now been dislodged from all but a handful of districts in the
western half of Mosul including the Old City, where Islamic State is expected
to make its last stand, taking advantage of narrow streets and its dense
population.
Brigadier General
Yahya Rasoul said the area controlled by Islamic State was no more than 9
percent of west Mosul, which is bisected by the River Tigris.
"It's a
very small area," he told Reuters. "God willing, this is the final
phase."
The elite
Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) stormed the Ureibi and Rifaie districts at dawn
on Sunday, according to a statement from the Joint Operations Command.
At the same
time, the army's ninth division and the Interior Ministry's elite Emergency
Response Division attacked the Islamic State bastion of 17 Tammouz.
"Daesh
(Islamic State) is drawing its last dying breath," the commander of the
ninth division, Lieutenant General Qasim Nazzal, told state television on
Sunday. "Daesh fighters are broken and quickly retreating from fronts."
Vastly
outnumbered by the forces arrayed against them, the militants are fighting back
with suicide car bombs and snipers embedded among hundreds of thousands of
civilians they are effectively holding hostage.
Conditions
in the shrinking area under militant control are increasingly desperate as
civilians resort to eating weeds and many are killed under heavy bombardment.
The number
of people fleeing Mosul has more than doubled to about 10,000 a day since
Friday, according to Iraqi government figures.
Defense
analyst and former general Jasim al-Bahadli said the strategy adopted by Iraqi
commanders was to splinter the remaining militants into smaller groups and
attack them on multiple fronts to disrupt their command and control.
"By
taking back all the districts surrounding the Old City, the militants will have
no chance to receive any back-up or reinforcements," he said.
*REUTERS*
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