Iraq Air Force Bombs ISIS in Syria for First Time

All of Mosul’s bridges spanning the Tigris River and connecting the western part of the city, still held by ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, with its eastern sector, were disabled by air strikes past year.

Hassan-Yari noted that government forces and their coalition partners have imposed restrictions on firepower available to retake the western sectors “in order to save the lives of civilians”.

By nightfall, troops were moving into the sprawling airfield to launch operations into the fortified western suburbs, where several thousand of Isis’s most seasoned fighters have prepared for a last stand.

But the group still controls swathes of territory in neighbouring Syria and patches in northern and western Iraq from where it could fight a guerrilla-style insurgency in Iraq, and plot attacks on the West.

The February 16 vehicle bomb blast in Bayaa killed at least 52 people and was the deadliest such attack in Baghdad since a suicide truck bomb explosion in the Karrada neighbourhood set teeming shopping arcades ablaze and killed more than 320.

Pentagon officials will now use ISIS instead of ISIL to refer to the terror army.

An Iraqi security forces member is pictured beside a destroyed airport building in Mosul after driving out Islamic State’s militants.

USA -led coalition troops, officially deployed as trainers and advisers, have assisted the Iraqi force in the Mosul offensive.

Al-Saadi said the Mamun neighborhood was particularly hard because its streets are not organized in a grid.

We estimate over 120 countries that provided 45,000 foreign fighters to Syria and Iraq, so that is one element that makes them a transnational threat. In the past year, Iraq – backed by the USA – has forced the extremists out of much of the country’s territory.

The battle for regaining the western side of Mosul is likely to be tough because of the population density and narrow streets. A lack of power is making it hard to charge cell phones, with many people relying on generators for electricity at the same time fuel prices are rising.

But he added: “ISIS is the term most known and understood by the American public, and it is what our leadership uses”.

According to Iraqi News, ISIS leaders have disseminated a list of almost 150 members who are wanted for arrest, because they fled in the face of fighting in Mosul.

An old man who came with them said about 20 people were sheltering in their house when it was hit by an air strike two days ago in the southwestern Maamoun district.

On Friday, Iraqi forces seized the city’s airport. “However, we don’t yet know what civilians in the western side of the city will choose to do”.

Earlier this week, the Telegraph reportedly went to the Khasfa sinkhole following the recapture of the western half of Mosul by Iraqi troops.