Kurdish forces closing in on Mosul

Erbil, October 22 

Iraqi forces have advanced to 5 km from Mosul in an offensive against Islamic State’s last major Iraq stronghold and there are signs of revolt against the group, the interior minister of the Kurdish regional government said on Saturday. But he added the battle is not expected to end soon.

Karim Sinjari, who is also acting defence minister in the area, told Reuters in an interview that Islamic State fighters, believed to number between 4,000 and 8,000,  will put up a fierce fight because of Mosul’s symbolic value for the hardline Sunni jihadis.

“If they resist in the city, especially in old Mosul, it will be a big fight ... The roads are very thin, very narrow. You can’t have vehicles, you can’t have tanks. So it will be a fight, person by person,” he said. Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate and himself the leader of the world’s Muslims at a Mosul mosque after seizing Iraq’s second largest city in 2014.

“If Mosul is finished the caliphate they announced is finished. If they lose in Mosul, they will have no place, just Raqqa,” Sinjari said. The Syrian city of Raqqa is IS’ other major stronghold. “They will have to go to Syria. They will be surrounded in one area.” The much-heralded battle to capture Mosul began last week and is expected to be the most important battle fought in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003.

Iraq has come a long way since June 2014 when five Iraqi army divisions crumbled as IS swept into Mosul. IS has been dislodged from Falluja. — Reuters

Biggest battle since 2003

• The offensive on Mosul is expected to become the biggest battle fought in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003. The Iraqi army is also trying to advance from the south and the east while Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are holding fronts in the east and north.
• US forces at Iraq’s Qayyara West airfield, south of Mosul, put on protective masks after winds brought fumes from a nearby sulphur plant set alight by Islamic State fighters, US military officials said.
• The Iraqi army’s media office said about 50 villages had been taken from the militants since Monday in operations to prepare the main thrust into Mosul itself