ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – An ISIS leader was gunned down in southern Mosul city on Sunday amid clashes between the Iraqi military and the militants, the Iraqi Army said.
A statement by the Iraq War Media Office said that “Abu Hamza al-Ansari was killed in clashes with the army’s 15th division in southern Mosul.” It said he was an Algerian.
In other military developments against ISIS in Mosul, a Kurdish official said that in two eastern neighborhoods of the city residents have staged uprisings against the extremists, killing three militants and forcing more than a hundred families associated with ISIS to flee to Syria.
“The situation in Mosul is bad. Residents have risen against ISIS at the Nabi Younis and Bakir neighborhoods, killing three militants and forcing 111 families associated with them to flee to Syria,” Saed Mamuzini, a Kurdish official from Mosul who lives Kurdistan since the ISIS takeover of the city, told Rudaw.
Mamuzini added that some neighborhoods, including “Sada and Baaweza are being intensely shelled and clashes are ongoing at the al-Karama and Quds neighborhoods.”
Upon their persistent retreats in Mosul, he explained, “ISIS has blown up a fourth bridge in Mosul and has closed three.”
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, ordered the Mosul offensive in the early hours of Oct. 17.
Since then, Peshmerga forces, the Iraqi Army and its associated paramilitary groups have liberated villages around Mosul. Fierce fighting is reported as ISIS puts up tough resistance to Iraqi forces trying to push deeper from the fringe neighborhoods of the city.
