Fierce fighting at outskirts of Mosul Old City

The elite Rapid Response Force and Iraqi federal police attacked the Islamic State group militants with rifles, machineguns, mortar rounds and rockets a month after the west Mosul operation began. 

The joint forces were around 100 metres south of Mosul’s Iron Bridge, which has been destroyed along with other bridges that span the Tigris River that linked the city’s eastern and western sides. 

Helicopters circled overhead harrying IS with barrages of bullets and rocket fire in strikes aided by weather that was clearer than it had been in recent days, correspondents said. 

“The aim of the battle is to go past Al-Hadidi Bridge northwards,” Brigadier General Abbas al-Juburi of the Rapid Response units told AFP. He said the operation was complicated by the presence of hundreds of thousands of civilians believed to have stayed on under jihadists rule. 

“The difficulties are the presence of families, how to avoid opening fire on families who are used as human shields” by IS jihadists, Juburi said. The battle for the densely populated Old City, with its warrens of alleyways, was always expected to be the toughest of the campaign to retake Mosul from IS. In Jan Iraqi forces retook the east side of the city before setting their sights on the west. 

At the heart of the Old City lies the Al-Nuri Mosque, where IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in July 2014 proclaimed the IS “caliphate” that spans jihadist-controlled territory in Iraq and Syria. It was Baghdadi’s first public appearance and the capture of the mosque would be highly symbolic and strategic for the Iraqi forces who have in recent days taken several targets from IS. 

On Saturday elite forces battled house by house in the Old City as they tried to inch towards the mosque, but were slowed by bad weather and the complicated effort of navigating the narrow streets.