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BAGHDAD: The US-backed Iraqi offensive to take back Mosul from Daesh gained fresh momentum on Thursday, with an armored division trying to advance into the city from the northern side.
The militants are now besieged in the northwestern corner of Mosul, which includes the historic Old City center, the medieval Grand Al-Nuri Mosque and its landmark leaning minaret where their black flag has been flying since June 2014.
The Iraqi Army’s 9th Armored Division and the Rapid Response units of the Interior Ministry have opened a new front in the northwest of the city, the military said in a statement.
The attack will help the elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) and Interior Ministry Federal Police troops who are painstakingly advancing from the south.
“Our forces are making a steady advance in the first hours of the offensive and Daesh fighters are breaking and retreating,” Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, a spokesman for the joint operations command, told state television.
Federal Police and Rapid Response forces advanced 1,400 meters and keep pushing ahead in the Hulela area toward the Haramat district northwest of Mosul. They were trying to reach the Tigris riverbank and surround the Fifth Bridge north of the Old City, the Federal Police said in a statement.
A US-led international coalition is providing key air and ground support to the offensive on Mosul.
“An armored division should not be going into narrow alleyways and streets but we will,” said Lt. Gen. Qassem Al-Maliki, commander of the 9th Armored Division.
“There are sometimes troop shortages or orders that require us to do so and we will do our duty,” he said. “We will enter with Rapid Response forces and CTS and we will enter as one front.”
Close US support should help the involvement of the armored division and reduce the risk for civilians, US Army Lt. Col. James Browning, the partnered adviser to the Iraqi 9th Armored Division, told Reuters at the base.
“Everything I am trying to do is try to shape the battlefield for him,” Browning, a battalion commander from the 82nd Airborne Division, said referring to Al-Maliki.
“I am looking at trying to strike right in front of him as well as deep, even into Old Mosul.”
US support is essential for getting rid of suicide car bombs, known as VBIEDs, driven by the militants as road torpedoes before crashing into troops.
A typical conversation between Browning and Al-Maliki would go like this: “What are you seeing on the screen? Do you see civilians?” Browning recalls Al-Maliki asking.
“And sometimes I say ‘yes’ and he (Al-Maliki) says ‘don’t strike.’ I go through that process every time. We scan, we take a look, we make sure,” Browning said.
The war is taking a heavy toll on civilians trapped behind Daesh lines and used by the militants as shields.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi is in talks with the US to keep American troops in Iraq after the fight against Daesh is concluded, according to a US official and an official from the Iraqi government.
Both officials underlined that the discussions are ongoing and that nothing is finalized. But the talks point to a consensus by both governments that, in contrast to the US withdrawal in 2011, a longer-term presence of American troops in Iraq is needed to ensure that an insurgency does not bubble up again once the militants are driven out.