MOSUL // The battle to take full control of Mosul from ISIL will be over in a few days, an Iraqi general said on Monday, adding that an attempt by the militants to return had failed.
"Only a small part remains in the city, specifically the Old City," said Lieutenant General Abdul Ghani Al Assadi, commander of the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) elite units in Mosul.
"From a military perspective, Daesh is finished," Gen Assadi said. "It lost its fighting spirit and its balance, we are making calls to them to surrender or die."
The area now under ISIL control in Mosul, once the militant group's de facto capital in Iraq, is less than 2 sq kms, the Iraqi military said.
An attempt by ISIL militants late on Sunday to return to neighbourhoods outside the Old City failed,Gen Al Assadi said, adding the city would fall "in very few days, God willing".
The CTS is leading the fight in the densely populated maze of narrow alleyways of the historic Old City which lies by the western bank of the Tigris river.
A US-led international coalition is providing air and ground support in the eight-month-old offensive.
The militants last week destroyed the historic Grand Al Nuri Mosque and its leaning minaret from which their leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi declared a caliphate spanning parts of Iraq and Syria three years ago. The mosque's grounds remain under the militants' control.
Iraqi troops captured the neighbourhood of Al Faruq in the north-western side of the Old City facing the mosque, the military said on Monday.
Iraqi forces took the eastern side of Mosul from ISIL in January, after 100 days of fighting, and started attacking the western side in February.
Up to 350 militants are estimated by the Iraqi military to be besieged in the Old City, dug in among civilians in crumbling houses and making extensive use of booby traps, suicide bombers and sniper fire to slow down the troops' advance.
Gen Al Assadi said Iraqi forces had linked up along Al Faruq, a main street bisecting the Old City, and would start pushing east, toward the river. "It will be the final episode," he said.
More than 50,000 civilians, about half the Old City's population, remain trapped behind ISIL lines with little food, water or medicines, according to those who escaped.
Aid organisations say ISIL has stopped many from leaving, using them as human shields. Hundreds of civilians fleeing the Old City have been killed in the past three weeks.
ISIL has carried out sporadic suicide bombings in parts of Mosul using sleeper cells. It launched a wave of such attacks late on Sunday, trying to take control of a district west of the Old City, Hay Al Tanak, and the nearby Yarmuk neighbourhood.
Social media posts showed black smoke and reports that it came from houses and cars set alight by the militants. Witnesses said residents had fled the two neighbourhoods.
Gen Al Assadi said the attempt to take over the neighbourhoods had failed and the militants were now besieged in one or two pockets of Hay Al Tanak. A curfew was in force over western Mosul, witnesses reported.
The fall of Mosul would mark the end of the Iraqi half of the "caliphate", but ISIL remains in control of large areas of both Iraq and Syria.
Baghdadi has left the fighting in Mosul to local commanders and has been assumed to be hiding in the Iraqi-Syrian border area. There has been no confirmation of Russian reports over the past days that he has been killed.
In Syria, the insurgents' self-declared capital of Raqqa, is nearly encircled by a US-backed, Kurdish-led coalition.
* Reuters
