The spokesman for the United States-led anti-Islamic State (ISIS) coalition Col. Christopher Garver said on Friday that ISIS has less than 10,000 of its militants in Mosul. That being said he cautioned against the "optimistic estimate" that the city can be liberated and secured by the end of the year. While there have been plans to rout the group from Mosul by the end of the year Garver pointed out that the US is operating on what "is still an Iraq timeline." "Iraqis are still building the plan," he was quoted saying by Anadolu news. "We are supporting them with their plans, but we look for ways to accelerate the timeline." The US special envoy for anti-ISIS efforts, Brett McGurk told a press conference in Baghdad on Saturday that ISIS is "losing" and that they will lose Mosul too. The current strategy the coalition is pursuing, he explained, is one of cutting the main road connecting Mosul to ISIS's Syrian stronghold Raqqa. "Daesh [ISIS] is feeling pressure now from all simultaneous directions and that's going to continue ... that's going to accelerate," McGurk told the conference according to Al Arabiya. "Daesh is losing; as they lose we focus increasingly on stabilization." He didn't, however, specify when he thinks both Mosul and Raqqa will be liberated. The Defense Intelligence Agency's chief, Marine Corps Lieut. Gen. Vincent Stewart, cautioned those with high expectations about an imminent liberation of Mosul when he told the House Armed Service Committee that, "Taking and securing Mosul in the next eight to ten months is not something I'm seeing in my crystal ball." As many as 12 Iraqi brigades allied with two Kurdish Peshmerga brigades will participate in the city's liberation. Col. Garver also pointed out that liberating Mosul is a more complicated process than retaking parts of neighbouring Syria from ISIS where the Kurdish-majority Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continue to make advances at the groups expense, pushing it further southward. "When you are in the Euphrates River valley and Tigris River valley, the two river valleys which they [Daesh] are having, to root out Daesh along that way is very different than attacks across the open desert which we have seen [the SDF do] in Hasakah, al Hawl and now in Shadadi." In Mosul on the other hand, he explained, the liberators will have to contend wtih narrow urban environments laden with sophisticated booby traps and impoverished explosive devices.
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