Iraqi special forces seize Mosul district in fresh push

Iraqi specialforces said they pushed deeper into Mosul on Friday despiteheavy resistance from ISIS militants using civilians ascover, and were holding half a dozen city neighbourhoods seizedin the last 10 days.

The elite Counter Terrorism Service troops broke throughISIS defence lines to enter the city early last weekand have since been embroiled in a brutal, close-quarter combatwith waves of suicide bombers and snipers.

We are facingthemost difficult form of urban warfare. CTS spokesman Sabahal-Numani

The special forces are the spearhead of a wider coalition of100,000 fighters seeking to crush the few thousand jihadists who have ruled Mosul, the biggest city of theircross-border "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria, for the last twoyears.

The campaign, nearly four weeks old, is the most complexmilitary operation in Iraq in the 13 years of turmoil since theU.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Security forces and army infantry divisions, backed by aU.S.-led air force, are preparing to move on southern andnorthern districts of Mosul in coming days, to step up pressureon the militants.

Kurdish Peshmerga and Shia paramilitary forces areholding territory to the northeast and to the west.

• Anti-ISIS fight will get harder after Mosul, says general
• Canadian troops spending more time at front lines in Iraq as future of mission is unclear

On the eastern front, special forces pushed into theQadisiya al-Thaniya district, on the northern edge of the smallpocket of neighbourhoods they control so far, Sabah al-Numani,spokesman for the Counter Terrorism Service, told Reuters.

"We have encountered heavy resistance from the enemy," hesaid, describing what he called "obstructive patrols" ofmilitant forces trying to hold up the advance.

"We are facing the most difficult form of urban warfare,fighting with the presence of civilians, but our forces aretrained for this sort of combat."

Thousands displaced

Military officers have told Reuters that the fighting issome of the most lethal they have seen, with small groups ofmilitants using a vast network of tunnels and narrow streets tolaunch an apparently endless sequence of attacks against troops.

A Reuters correspondent in Kokjali, on the eastern edge ofthe city, saw U.S. Apache helicopters overhead. Explosions,either from airstrikes or suicide car bombs which the jihadistshave deployed in the hundreds since the campaign started on Oct.17, could be heard against a backdrop of artillery fire.

• 5,000 fighters join Iraq-led offensive to retakeMosul

As smoke rose above the city, hundreds of civilians were onthe streets of Kokjali, some of them local residents but othersfleeing the fighting in Mosul itself.

The International Organization for Migration says nearly48,000 people have been displaced by the fighting, still arelatively low figure compared to a United Nations warningbefore the campaign of a possible exodus of 700,000 or 800,000.

Numani said the army had told civilians to stay indoors fortheir safety, adding that the counter terrorism unit aimed tohand over neighbourhoods which it had secured to other forces.In other cities retaken from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, local police forceshave moved in after the special forces have cleared territory.

Bodies crucified

Inside the city of up to 1.5 million people, residents saidthis week that the militants had killed at least 20 people anddisplayed their bodies five of them crucified around Mosulas a warning against acting as informants for Iraqiforces.

The UNhuman rights office said a total of 40 people werereportedly shot on Tuesday for "treason and collaboration" withIraqi security forces, and a 27-year-old man was shot for usinga mobile phone.

A mass grave with more than 100 bodies found in the town ofHammam al-Alil south of Mosul was one of several ISIS killing grounds, spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said.

She cited testimony from sources including a man who escapedafter playing dead during the execution of 50 former Iraqisoldiers.

She also said the jihadists were reportedly stockpilingammonia and sulphur in civilian areas, possibly for use aschemical weapons.

On Thursday, Iraqi soldiers advancing on the eastern side ofthe Tigris targeted two villages close to the ancient Assyriancity of Nimrud, a military statement said.

Troops from the Ninth Armoured Division took control of oneof them, the village of Abbas Rajab, four kilometres east of Nimrud, andraised the Iraqi flag, it said.

The Iraqi government says Nimrud was bulldozed last year aspart of the ISIS campaign to destroy symbols which theSunni Muslim zealots consider idolatrous. It would be the firstsuch site to be recaptured from ISIS.