Iraqi forces battle IS in heavy west Mosul fighting

Iraqi forces have launched a new push in their battle to capture western Mosul from so-called Islamic State.

Iraqi forces have recaptured several areas in west Mosul since launching the push to retake it on Feb 19, but their pace slowed recently amid several days of bad weather, which muddies streets and makes air support more hard.

The move, a little more than a week into a major push on Mosul’s west bank, could allow Iraqi forces to extend a floating bridge between the city’s two halves and pile pressure on the jihadists.

ISIL, which holds the majority of west Mosul, has periodically used rudimentary chemical weapons in the course of its more than two-year war with Iraqi forces.

The highway leads to Tal Afar, an Islamic State stronghold that the Hashd al-Shaabi Shiite-led militia is attempting to capture further west of Mosul.

Some militants were able to get near elite Iraqi units in the southwestern part of the city, hidden among people displaced by the fighting, a senior officer told Reuters.

“What we are struggling with is the copious numbers of people who are fleeing but also the state they are in”.

Al Jazeera’s Dekker, reporting from Hassan Al Sham’s camp for displaced people, said: “What we understand is that they’re [Iraqi forces] now pushing in an area just south of the old city, an area that houses one of the government buildings”.

He said ISIS fighters are moving from house to house and deploying snipers.

While all five bridges linking the government-held eastern Mosul to the western part have been destroyed, the takeover of the fourth bridge will allow Iraqi forces to lay a ramp over the broken part and open a supply route from the east.

In mid-February, Iraqi forces – backed by a US -led air coalition – began fresh operations aimed at purging Daesh terrorists from western Mosul.

“The stories of the survivors are heart-breaking”, said Thomas Lothar Weiss, Iraq Chief of Mission of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), in a press release. That would be the highest rate since the Iraqi military’s Mosul operation began last October.

With the remaining Islamic State units retreating deeper into the historic heart of the city, street-by-street fighting is imminent.