Iraqi government and Kurdish forces, backed by US-led coalition air and ground support, launched coordinated military operations early on Monday as the long-awaited fight to wrest the northern city of Mosul from Daesh fighters got underway.
Convoys of Iraqi, Kurdish and US forces moved east of Mosul along the front line as US-led coalition airstrikes sent plumes of smokes into the air and heavy artillery rounds could be heard.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi announced the start of the operations on state television, launching the country on its toughest battle since American troops left nearly five years ago.
Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, has been under Daesh rule for more than two years and is still home to more than a million civilians according to UN estimates.
“These forces that are liberating you today, they have one goal in Mosul which is to get rid of Daesh and to secure your dignity. They are there for your sake,” Al-Abadi said, addressing the city’s residents and using the Arabic language acronym for the Daesh group.
“God willing, we shall win,” he added, flanked by military commanders.The push to retake Mosul will be the largest military operation in Iraq since American troops left in 2011 and, if successful, the biggest blow yet to the Daesh. Al-Abadi pledged the fight for the city would lead to the liberation of all Iraqi territory from the militants this year.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Ash Carter called the launch of the Mosul operation “a decisive moment in the campaign” to deliver a lasting defeat to Daesh.
Iraqi forces have been massing around the city in recent days, including elite special forces that are expected to lead the charge into the city, as well as Kurdish forces, Sunni tribal fighters, federal police and Shiite militia forces.South of Mosul, Iraqi military units are based at the sprawling Qayara air base, but to the city’s east, men are camped out in abandoned homes as the tens of thousands of troops massed around the city have overwhelmed the few military bases in the area.
Kurdish forces are stationed to the north and east of Mosul, a mostly Sunni city that has long been a center of insurgent activity and anti-central government sentiment after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Iraqi officials have warned that the Mosul operation has been rushed before a political agreement has been set for how the city will be governed after Daesh.
Lt. Col. Amozhgar Taher with Iraq’s Kurdish forces, also known as the peshmerga, said his men would only move to retake a cluster of mostly Christian and Shabak villages east of Mosul and would not enter the city itself due to their concern for “sectarian sensitivities.”
“To eliminate the threat we must eliminate (Daesh) from Mosul,” Taher said at a makeshift base in an abandoned house along the front line, some 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of Mosul.
Iraqi special forces Lt. Col. Ali Hussein said the Kurdish forces are leading the first push on Mosul’s eastern front. His men were also anxious to move out to the front line, though he said he expects they will wait near the town of Khazer for another day or two.
Mosul fell to Daesh fighters during the militants’ June 2014 blitz that left nearly a third of Iraq in the extremists’ hands and plunged the country into its most severe crisis since the US-led invasion. After seizing Mosul, Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi visited the city to declare an Islamic caliphate that at one point covered nearly a third of Iraq and Syria.
Source : http://www.arabnews.com/
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