Iraqi Special Forces Pause in Mosul Push Due to Poor Weather

Anti-IS fighters were also within striking distance of Mosul’s northern neighbourhoods while in the east elite counter-terrorism forces and army troops punching in from two directions were expected to join up despite stiff resistance.

More than 5,000 civilians are threatened with starvation and disease in Hazar, an ISIS-controlled town west of Mosul that remains besieged by the Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitaries.

Iraqi forces piled pressure on the Islamic State group around Mosul yesterday, moving closer to cutting off the jihadists’ escape route west to Syria and thrusting deeper into the east of the city.

The airbase, to the west of the former Isis stronghold of Mosul, was a key supply line of the terrorist group, which used it to transport people as well as materials. Its seizure could also alarm Turkey, which is wary of Iraqi Shi’ite involvement in the civil war in Syria. Air strikes by the US-led coalition supporting the operation added to the fire hitting the district.

In April 2015, the Islamic State extremists released a shocking video that showed how they had hammered, bulldozed and blew up parts of the 13th century B.C. Assyrian capital in the Tigris River valley south of Mosul. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said the military lost 2,300 Humvees alone.

The advance of the pre-dominantly Shiite paramilitary units in the ethnically mixed region where Sunni Muslims form a majority, could spark sectarian tension with Sunni Arabs and neighboring Sunni state of Turkey.

“At least 32 arrestees were executed on Thursday by fighting squad after ISIS accused them of leaking information about the group’s deployments in Mosul city”, head of Nineveh Media Centre Raafat al-Zarari told ARA News.

“Iraq’s Joint Operations Command put out a similar statement”.

Canadian military trainers operating with Kurdish fighters have clashed several dozen times with Isis militants over the last month, defence officials said on Wednesday in Ottawa.

Kurdish Peshmerga forces “will not retreat from areas retaken” from Islamic State militants in Iraq, Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani said, according to Rudaw TV station.

Now the Shi’ite militia is thought to be besieging about 70 villages west of Mosul, which the sheikh says are being subjected to random shelling, including of residential areas.

Members of the Iraqi forces drive a BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle as they hold a position in the village of Jarif, some 45 kilometers south of Mosul, on November 12, 2016, after retaking it from Daesh.

Islamic State militants seized huge caches of weapons from the Iraqi army when they took over Mosul 2½ years ago.

Since ISIS began seizing territory across Iraq in 2014, 3.3 million civilians have been displaced.

While the ISIS presence has started to wane in parts of the northern city, a number of residents told CNN they are disappointed with the pace of Mosul’s liberation. The U.S. -led coalition estimates that since the operation was formally announced, coalition airstrikes destroyed hundreds of meters of IS tunnel networks.

Inside those neighborhoods, Iraqi forces are now surrounded by thousands of civilians as they continue to push to the city center.