Wednesday 19 / March / 2025
Al Shura/Baghdad: Iraqi militias said on Saturday they had launched an offensive towards the west of Mosul, an operation that would tighten the noose around IS's Iraq stronghold.
The battle for Mosul is expected to be the biggest in the 13 years of turmoil unleashed in Iraq by the 2003 US-led invasion.
A spokesman for the militias, known as the Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) forces, said thousands of fighters "started operations this morning to clean up the hotbeds of Daesh (IS) in the western parts of Mosul".
The city is by far the largest held by the IS and its loss would mark their effective defeat in Iraq.
The militias aim to capture villages west of Mosul and reach the town of Tal Afar, about 55km (35 miles) from the city, the Hashid spokesman said. Their goal is to cut off any option of retreat by IS insurgents into neighbouring Syria or any reinforcement for their defence of Mosul.
The battle-hardened paramilitaries bring additional firepower to the nearly two-week-old campaign to recapture Iraq's second largest city from the militant group.
Iraqi soldiers and security forces and Kurdish peshmerga fighters, backed by a US-led air coalition and thousands of Western military personnel, have been advancing in the last 13 days on the southern, eastern and northeastern fronts around Mosul, which remains home to 1.5 million people.
The United Nations has warned of a possible humanitarian crisis and a potential refugee exodus from Mosul - though the start of operations on the city's western flank could leave Mosul's civilians with no outlet to safety, even if they are able to escape IS control.
Villagers from outlying areas around Mosul have told Reuters that women and children were being forced to walk as human shields alongside retreating IS fighters as they withdrew into the city this week.
Iraqi and Western military sources say there had been debate about whether or not to seal off Mosul's western flank. Leaving it open would have offered IS a chance to retreat, potentially sparing residents from a devastating, inner-city fight to the finish.
Some civilians fleeing Mosul have used the roads to the west to escape to Qamishli, in Kurdish-controlled northern Syria. Others, from villages just outside Mosul, have exploited the chaos to flee in the other direction.
"Some people fled the other day so we took a chance. Daesh (IS) fired two bullets at us but they missed and we made it," said Ahmed Raad, 20, from the village of Abu Jarbuaa northeast of Mosul, who had found refuge at a peshmerga base.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said on Saturday 17,520 people have been displaced so far during the Mosul operation - excluding thousands of people forced back into the city by IS.
Thirty km (20 miles) south of Mosul, Iraqi rapid response forces entered the town of Al Shura, once a significant base for IS where the militants enjoyed strong support.
An intelligence officer said that most of the IS insurgents appeared to have pulled back north towards Mosul, leaving just a small number to try to slow the advancing security forces.
Captain Abbas Shakir, speaking at the western edge of the town, said IS fighters had built up defences in the east and the south. "The enemy was surprised by our entrance from the west... They dropped their weapons and fled," he said.
Shakir told Reuters that security forces had taken the centre of Al Shura and raised the Iraqi flag, killing 50 to 60 IS insurgents. The remaining militants were firing from the eastern edge of the town, and security forces responded with artillery fire and air strikes.
Nearly two weeks into the Mosul campaign launched by Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi, troops advancing along the Tigris river valley are much further from Mosul than Kurdish peshmerga fighters and an elite army unit advancing from the east.
Saturday's announcement by the militias added another force to the coalition of fighters seeking to crush IS in Iraq, but will also raise concerns about the role the Popular Mobilisation fighters will play.
Targeting the IS-held town of Tal Afar, close to Turkey and home to a sizeable ethnic Turkmen population with historic and cultural ties to Turkey, will alarm Ankara.
Hashid spokesman Ahmed Al Assadi said Turkish forces, who are training tribal combatants in a camp northeast of Mosul to join the offensive against IS, were in no position to obstruct the militia advance.
He also said the Popular Mobilisation forces, who have already fought in Syria, would cross the border into Syria to support him again once they had "cleared" IS from their own country.
The Popular Mobilisation force, formed in 2014 to help push back IS's sweeping advance, officially report to Abadi's government.
