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BAGHDAD: The advance of government troops slowed on Sunday in the last push to drive Daesh terrorists from remaining pockets of Mosul, two Iraqi military officers said.
On Saturday, US-backed Iraqi forces began a new offensive to recapture the Old City from three directions.
Hours after announcing the push, the government said two military officers were killed in clashes in the Shafaa neighborhood on the Tigris River.
Daesh militants have deployed snipers, suicide car bombers and suicide attackers on foot, the officers said.
They described the advance on Mosul’s Old City as “cautious” and the clashes on Sunday as “sporadic.”
The troops captured Ibn Sina hospital, part of the sprawling medical complex in the Shafaa neighborhood, the officers added.
Mosul’s wide-scale military operation was launched in October and its eastern half was declared liberated in January. The push for the city’s west began the following month.
Daesh’s hold on Mosul has shrunk to just a handful of neighborhoods in and around the Old City district where narrow streets and a dense civilian population are expected to complicate the fight there.
On Friday, Iraqi planes dropped leaflets over the area, encouraging the civilians to flee “immediately” to “safe passages” where they will be greeted by “guides, protectors and (transportation) to reach safe places,” according to a government statement.
The UN estimated that as many as 200,000 people may try to leave in the coming days, while Save the Children warned that fleeing civilians could be caught in the crossfire, leading to “deadly chaos.”
The fall of Mosul would, in effect, mark the end of the Iraqi half of the “caliphate” declared nearly three years ago by Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, which also covers parts of Syria.
The enclave includes the Old City center and three adjacent districts along the western bank of the Tigris river.
The US-backed offensive in Mosul, now in its eighth month, has taken longer than planned as the militants are dug in among civilians.
Desperate civilians trapped behind Daesh lines now face a harrowing situation with little food and water, no electricity and limited access to hospitals.
The Iraqi Air Force dropped leaflets on Friday urging residents to flee but humanitarian groups say they fear for the safety of those trying to escape.
The push inside the Old City coincides with the start of Ramadan.
The offensive’s prime target is the Al-Nuri mosque with its landmark leaning minaret.
Iraqi armed forces hope to capture the mosque — where Baghdadi announced the “caliphate” — in the next few days.
Residents in the Old City sounded desperate in telephone interviews over the past few days.
“We are waiting for death at any moment, either by bombing or starving,” one said.
“Adults eat one meal a day, either flour or lentil soup.”
The UN expressed deep concern for the hundreds of thousands of civilians behind Daesh lines, in a statement from Stephen O’Brien, the organization’s under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs.
“Although the UN is not present in the areas where fighting is occurring, we have received very disturbing reports of families being shut inside booby-trapped homes and of children being deliberately targeted by snipers,” he said.
Residents said millet, usually used as bird feed, is being cooked like rice as food prices increased ten-fold. People were seen collecting wild mallow plants in abandoned lots and also eating mulberry leaves and other plants.
About 700,000 people, about a third of the pre-war city’s population, have already fled, seeking refuge either with friends and relatives or in camps.
The insurgents are also retreating in Syria, mainly in the face of US-backed Kurdish-led forces.
The insurgency is expected to continue in the sparsely populated desert region along the Syrian border even if Mosul is fully captured.
Iranian-backed Shiite paramilitary forces are fighting Daesh in that part of the country where Baghdadi is believed to be, according to US and Iraqi officials.
On Saturday, Iran announced for the first time the death of a senior commander during the operations launched in October to drive the militants out of Mosul and the surrounding Nineveh province.
Shaaban Nassiri, a senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), was killed west of Mosul, near the border with Syria, according to Mashregh, an Iranian news website.
The IRGC is the main backer of the Iraqi paramilitary force known as Popular Mobilization.
Iraq’s government is aiming to control the border in coordination with the Iranian-backed Syrian army.
Linking up the two sides would give Syrian President Bashar Assad a significant advantage in the six-year rebellion against his rule.