Iraq forces face tough resistance in advance on Mosul’s Old City

MOSUL // Iraqi forces battling ISIL faced tough resistance from snipers and mortar rounds on Monday as they tried to advance on Mosul’s Old City and a bridge across the Tigris river in their campaign to retake the western part of the city.

Progress by rapid response units was slowed by heavy rain on Monday morning, but they were only 100 metres from the Iron Bridge which connects the Old City with the eastern side of Mosul, military officials said.

Since starting the campaign in October, Iraqi forces with U.S.-led coalition support have recaptured eastern Mosul and around 30 percent of the west from militants who are outnumbered but fiercely defending their last stronghold in Iraq.

Federal police and rapid response brigades, an elite interior ministry unit, said at the weekend they had entered the Bab Al Tob area of the Old City, where fighting is expected to be toughest because of its narrow alleyways where armoured vehicles cannot pass. But the advance there stalled on Monday.

“Due to the bad rainy weather, operations have been halted for now. We are facing stiff resistance from the Daesh fighters with sniper shots and mortars,” a rapid response unit officer said.

Troops exchanged fire with snipers, while trying to drag blinds made of blankets and curtains across streets to obscure their movements. Heavy explosions later hit a hotel where ISIL gunmen had been returning fire.

“We moving on the old bridge...and then we will free that area and hopefully in a few days we’ll liberate the west side of Mosul,” said one Iraqi captain fighting there.

Federal police forces also fighting in areas close to the Iron Bridge were battling pockets of militants in Bab Al Tob district and carrying out house to house searches, a federal police commander’s spokesman said.

A military statement said Iraqi elite Counter Terrorism Service troops, known as CTS, managed to retake Al Nafut district of west Mosul.

As many as 600,000 civilians are caught with the militants inside Mosul, which Iraqi forces effectively sealed off from the remaining territory that ISIL controls in Iraq and Syria. The Iraqi forces include army, special forces, Kurdish peshmerga and Shiite militias.

*Reuters