West Mosul breached as war on ISIS rages in Iraq and Syria

World

West Mosul breached as war on ISIS rages in Iraq and Syria

Iraqi forces on Friday entered west Mosul neighborhoods, a key stronghold in the shrinking “caliphate” of the Islamic State group, which replied with deadly suicide attacks in Iraq and Syria. As the war on the world’s most violent jihadist group escalated, Iraqi warplanes struck ISIS militants inside neighboring Syria, a first that Damascus said was coordinated between the two governments. In another key landmark in the bloody offensive to retake Mosul, the largest city ever held by the jihadists, elite Iraqi forces punched into districts on the west bank of the Tigris River for the first time. It was not immediately clear whether Iraqi forces would keep venturing deeper into west Mosul or consolidate their positions on the edges ahead of dangerous operations towards the center.

The battle for western Mosul is expected to be the most trying yet. The western half of the city is denser, with older neighborhoods and narrower streets that will likely complicate the already difficult urban combat ahead. The narrow streets of the Old City, home to the mosque where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made his only public appearance as IS leader and proclaimed the “caliphate” in July 2014, could turn into a deathtrap and prolong the campaign. The loss of west Mosul would be a death blow to the jihadists’ claim they are running a “state” and leave the city of Raqqa in neighboring Syria as the only major urban center they still control. ISIS still holds scattered pockets of territory across Iraq and Syria but has suffered a string of setbacks in the past year and over the past few hours also lost their last bastion in Syria’s Aleppo province. Turkey said Friday its troops and the Syrian rebels it backs had fully retaken the town of al-Bab after weeks of fierce IS resistance, but the jihadists replied with a deadly suicide bombing there, killing 51 people.