Mosul, Iraq – The self-styled Islamic State (ISIS) attacked Iraq’s Counter-terrorist Service (ICT) with four car bomb attacks in Mosul on Friday morning in an attempt to halt their advances into the city’s eastern districts of al-Nur and northeastern district of al-Muthana.
The ICT are presently clashing heavily with ISIS militants in al-Nur, which has been under attack by the Iraqis for about 10 days now, reported Rudaw’s Sidad Lashkiri from Mosul.
Late in November the US-led coalition against ISIS “disabled” four of Mosul’s five bridges. The coalitions’ deputy commander, Maj. Gen. Rupert Jones, said this helps reduce the number of deadly car bomb attacks carried out by the militants.
The only bridge said to be functioning is the Old Bridge that connects the central eastern and western Mosul over the Tigris River, which divides the city.
“We will get to the Tigris River in the near future. We are 3.5 kilometers away from the Old Mosul Bridge,” the commander of the Iraqi Golden Division, Major General Fazil Barwari, told Rudaw on Thursday.
More than seven weeks after the launch of the Mosul offensive by a combination of Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), Kurdish Peshmerga forces and the Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitaries, Col. John Dorrian, the spokesperson for the coalition, said there are clear indications on the ground that ISIS is losing men and resources.
“What we have begun to see is that the forces they are using -- fighters that are confronting the Iraqi security forces -- sometimes they are younger fighters,” Dorrian told Rudaw TV on Thursday.
“Sometimes they are using vehicle-borne improvised devices without the same type of up-armoring that we saw in previous battles, and this is because they are beginning to run out of fighters and they are beginning to run out of resources,” he added.
But he warned that the fight ahead is tough, noting that it might take a few more weeks or even another couple of months for Mosul to be clear of ISIS.
The Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has repeatedly said that his forces will recapture Mosul before the end of 2016.
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Map legend:
Dark green - under Peshmerga control
Light green - encircled/battling by Peshmerga
Red - under Iraqi control
Pink - encircled/battling by Iraqi forces
Yellow - under Hashd al-Shaabi control
Orange - encircled/battling by Hashd al-Shaabi
