Shiite force eyes ISIS’ top leader as it begins fresh offensive west of Mosul

MOSUL, Iraq - The Shiite-led Hashd al Shaabi paramilitary force recaptured three more villages from ISIS west of Mosul Monday, the group announced, as it launched the next phase of a push toward Tal Afar airport and targeting ISIS’s top leader. 

The force claimed that the villages of Um Hajar al Ulyah, Sirwal and Ragrag, covering an area of 10 square kilometers west of Mosul, had been liberated on Monday.

It said 300 families in Sirwal had been liberated from ISIS and that its forces had “transported them to safe places.”

The Hashd al Shaabi, which says it has an armed force of 140,000 fighters, began its offensive southwest and west of Mosul on October 29, almost two weeks after the start of the Mosul operation by the Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

The group’s spokesman, Ahmad al-Asadi, told reporters today that it has an area of 14,000 sq. km to recapture from ISIS.

He said villages it had liberated during the second stage of its operations number 74. 

“The front that has been tasked to the Hashd al-Shaabi is one of the most significant and most dangerous fronts in this operation,” al-Asadi said last month. He added that the Hashd “is tasked with one of the widest areas, ranging from Qayyara in the west, Tal Afar in the north to the Mosul outskirts in the east and some areas on the Syrian-Iraqi border to the west.”

ISIS has been encircled on all sides in Mosul except the west, for which the Hashd al Shaabi is responsible.

Asadi claimed today that the area is vital and important for its geostrategic location between Iraq and Syria – where ISIS has its caliphate in the city of Raqqa -- but also because the militants’ top leader is present there. 

“The intelligence information indicates that their self-proclaimed caliph, the terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is usually present between Tal Afar and Baaj,” Asadi said.

Group denies human rights abuses

Amid reports of human rights violations by the participating forces in the Mosul offensive, including the Hashd al-Shaabi, Asadi claimed they had faced no problems, and even provided badly needed food and medicines.

“We will exercise the utmost discipline as we have done in all our previous operations,” he said. 

But at least in one incident on Nov. 1, Rudaw’s Bahman Hassan, who was embedded with the Hashd al Shaabi in the Nineveh plains, reported the force lined up many men from the villages for security checks before transferring entire families to refugee camps.

"It's unclear where the men are taken and how the questioning takes place," Hassan said.

When the paramilitaries began operations more than two weeks ago, they said the largely Turkmen town of Tal Afar was among areas they wanted to liberated.

 “The wounded and victimized town of Tal Afar and other towns will be among the areas (Hashd al-Shaabi) will liberate," Asadi said in late October.

He said that decision is now with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and reaffirmed that the Iraqi federal police and the Iraqi army will enter the town. 

Earlier this month Abadi told a delegation of tribal leaders from Tal Afar that the Hashd force will not enter the Turkmen town. He said that Iraqi forces would be given that responsibility. 

See Rudaw’s live map, including today’s advances by Iraqi forces and the Hashd al Shaabi