ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Soldiers may have to fight man-to- man in Mosul, a bigger city than Fallujah, and this will prolong the operation, the Kurdish acting Peshmerga minister said on Saturday.
"If they resist in the city, especially in old Mosul, it will be a big fight,” Karim Sinjari, who is also the Kurdish interior minister, told Reuters.
“The roads are very thin, very narrow. You can’t have vehicles, you can’t have tanks. So it will be a fight, person by person," he was quoted as saying.
On Monday, Kurdish forces alongside their Iraqi counterpart launched the biggest operation since the invasion of Iraq to reclaim the ISIS stronghold of Mosul, supported by the US-led coalition in the air and on the ground.
Sinjari said that Kurdish forces have liberated 20 villages and the Iraqis another 10 since the launch of the offensive.
“I think it (the fight for Mosul) will be longer than Fallujah and Tikrit, Mosul is a big city," Sinjari said
Mosul is the second-largest city in Iraq, with over one million residents believed to have stayed in the city.
It took the Iraqi forces more than a month to recapture Fallujah, another major stronghold for ISIS.
He said the plan is to surround Mosul from all sides to force the extremists to make their last stand in Iraq.
Mosul is where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the foundation of his so-called caliphate just days after its fall in June 2014.
