Tag Archives: Islamic State

Iraqi forces face fierce Islamic State combat in south Mosul

Iraqi army during battle against Islamic State

By Stephen Kalin

NEAR MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi forces faced fierce resistance from Islamic State militants in southern Mosul on Friday, the second day of a renewed push to take back the city after fighting stalled for several weeks.

An officer in the federal police forces, which joined the battle on Thursday, said there were heavy clashes in the southeastern Palestine district, but they had made progress in two other neighborhoods, disabling a number of car bombs.

Another officer, from an elite Interior Ministry unit fighting alongside federal police, said his forces were gaining ground in the Intisar district despite heavy clashes there.

Iraqi forces in the east and north of the city were clearing areas they had recaptured on Thursday before advancing any further, officers said, and the army was trying to cut supply lines to the town of Tel Keyf, north of Mosul.

Since the offensive began 10 weeks ago, U.S.-backed forces have retaken a quarter of the jihadists’ last major stronghold in Iraq in the biggest ground operation there since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Recapturing Mosul would probably spell the end for Islamic State’s self-styled caliphate, and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said the group would be driven out of Iraq by April.

Elite forces pushed into Mosul from the east in October but regular army troops tasked with advancing from the north and south made slower progress and the operation stagnated.

After regrouping this month, they renewed the offensive on Thursday, advancing from the south, east and north of the city, which has been under militant control for more than two years.

The second phase of the operation will see U.S. troops deployed closer to the front line inside the city.

On Friday, a Reuters reporter saw a handful of Americans in their MRAP vehicles, that tower over Iraqi tanks, accompanying top commanders to meetings in a village just north of Mosul.

Although the militants are vastly outnumbered, they have embedded themselves among Mosul residents, hindering Iraqi forces who are trying to avoid civilian casualties. Despite food and water shortages, most civilians have stayed in their homes rather than fleeing as had been expected.

A civilian in the southeastern Wahda district, which is still under Islamic State control, said helicopters were visible overhead firing at Islamic State targets on the ground.

“One of them targeted a car carrying a rocket launching pad from which Daesh (Islamic State) was targeting counterterrorism positions in liberated areas,” he said over the phone.

NORTHERN FRONT

On the northern front, Iraqi forces have yet to enter Mosul itself but on Friday they were clearing just-recaptured areas on its periphery as well as trying to cut off Tel Keyf.

“The enemy had occupied this area and used it for resting and resupplying toward Tel Keyf and Mosul,” Major General Najm al-Jubbouri, a top commander in the offensive told Reuters in the northern district of Sada, which was recaptured on Thursday.

“It (Tel Keyf) is surrounded from the other sides and by our forces here,” he said.

Jubbouri said the U.S.-led coalition backing Iraqi forces had killed 70 militants since late on Thursday and were using Apache helicopters, HIMARS rocket launchers and fighter jets.

Mosul is bisected by the Tigris river, and Iraqi forces have yet to enter the western side, where 2,000-year-old markets and narrow alleyways are likely to complicate any advance.

Coalition forces bombed the last remaining bridge connecting east and west Mosul late on Monday in a bid to block Islamic State’s access across the Tigris River.

A medical source in Mosul told Reuters a large number of wounded militants had been ferried across the river to the emergency hospital on the western side of city on Thursday.

The source said the militants were denying wounded and sick civilians access to the hospital.

More than 114,000 civilians have been displaced from Mosul so far, according to the United Nations – a fraction of the 1.5 million thought to still be inside.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Louise Ireland)

European cities ramp up security for New Year after Berlin attack

German policemen patrol

By Oliver Denzer and Geert De Clercq

BERLIN/PARIS (Reuters) – European capitals tightened security on Friday ahead of New Year’s celebrations, erecting concrete barriers in city centers and boosting police numbers after the Islamic State attack in Berlin last week that killed 12 people.

In the German capital, police closed the Pariser Platz square in front of the Brandenburg Gate and prepared to deploy 1,700 extra officers, many along a party strip where armored cars will flank concrete barriers blocking off the area.

“Every measure is being taken to prevent a possible attack,” Berlin police spokesman Thomas Neuendorf told Reuters TV. Some police officers would carry sub-machine guns, he said, an unusual tactic for German police.

Last week’s attack in Berlin, in which a Tunisian man plowed a truck into a Christmas market, has prompted German lawmakers to call for tougher security measures.

In Milan, where police shot the man dead, security checks were set up around the main square. Trucks were banned from the centers of Rome and Naples. Police and soldiers cradled machine guns outside tourists sites including Rome’s Colosseum.

Madrid plans to deploy an extra 1,600 police on the New Year weekend. For the second year running, access to the city’s central Puerta del Sol square, where revellers traditionally gather to bring in the New Year, will be restricted to 25,000 people, with police setting up barricades to control access.

In Cologne in western Germany, where hundreds of women were sexually assaulted and robbed outside the central train station on New Year’s Eve last year, police have installed new video surveillance cameras to monitor the station square.

The attacks in Cologne, where police said the suspects were mainly of North African and Arab appearance, fueled criticism of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to accept nearly 900,000 migrants last year.

The Berlin attack has intensified that criticism.

In Frankfurt, home to the European Central Bank and Germany’s biggest airport, more than 600 police officers will be on duty on New Year’s Eve, twice as many as in 2015.

In Brussels, where Islamist suicide bombers killed 16 people and injured more than 150 in March, the mayor was reviewing whether to cancel New Year fireworks, but decided this week that they would go ahead.

PARIS PATROLS

In Paris, where Islamic State gunmen killed 130 people last November, authorities prepared for a high-security weekend, the highlight of which will be the fireworks on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, where some 600,000 people are expected.

Ahead of New Year’s Eve, heavily armed soldiers patrolled popular Paris tourist sites such as the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre museum.

In the Paris metropolitan area, 10,300 police, gendarmes, soldiers, firemen and other personnel will be deployed, police said, fewer than the 11,000 in 2015 just weeks after the Nov. 13 attack at the Bataclan theater.

Searches and crowd filtering will be carried out by private security agents, particularly near the Champs-Élysées where thousands of people are expected, authorities said.

Across France, more than 90,000 police including 7,000 soldiers will be on duty for New Year’s Eve, authorities said.

On Wednesday, police in southwest France arrested a man suspected of having planned an attack on New Year’s Eve.

Two other people, one of whom was suspected of having planned an attack on police, were arrested in a separate raid, also in southwest France, near Toulouse, police sources told Reuters.

“We must remain vigilant at all times, and we are asking citizens to also be vigilant,” French Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux told a news conference in Paris, noting that the threat of a terrorist attack was high.

In Vienna, police handed out more than a thousand pocket alarms to women, eager to avoid a repeat of the sexual assaults at New Year in Cologne in 2015.

“At present, there is no evidence of any specific danger in Austria. However, we are talking about an increased risk situation,” Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said.

“We are leaving nothing to chance with regard to security.”

In Ukraine, police arrested a man on Friday who they suspected of planning a Berlin copycat attack in the city of Odessa.

(Additional reporting by Maria Sheahan in Frankfurt, Kirsti Knolle in Vienna, Teis Jensen in Copenhagen, Isla Binnie in Rome, Sarah White in Madrid, Robert Muller in Prague, Bate Felix and Johnny Cotton in Paris; Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Islamic State supporters call for more holiday attacks in Europe

FILE PHOTO: An Islamic State flag is seen in this picture

CAIRO (Reuters) – A pro-Islamic State group on Wednesday urged supporters of the jihadists to carry out attacks on targets such as markets and hospitals in Europe over the Christmas holiday period and urged Muslims to stay away from Christian celebrations.

The threat came as European authorities have stepped up security following an attack claimed by Islamic State in which a truck ploughed into crowds in a Berlin Christmas market and killed 12 people this month.

The Nashir Media Foundation, which backs Islamic State, posted its message online, accompanied by images of fighters with guns and knives, Santa Claus, reindeer and a Christmas tree, according to the according to the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant groups online.

“Their celebrations, gatherings, clubs, markets, theatres, cinemas, malls and even their hospitals are all perfect targets for you,” the online message to Islamist “lone wolves” in Europe said.

It said Islamic State would “replace their fireworks with explosive belts and devices, and turn their singing and clapping into weeping and wailing”.

The message reminded Islamic State supporters of a call earlier this month by the group’s new spokesman, Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajer, who said they should also attack Turkish consulates and embassies.

Turkey may have been chosen as a target because it has backed rebels in Syria against Islamic State.

(Reporting by Ali Abdelaty; Writing by Giles Elgood)

Iraqi forces launch second phase of Mosul offensive against Islamic State

Members of Hashid Shaabi or Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) fire towards Islamic State militant positions in west of Mosul, Iraq

By Isabel Coles and Stephen Kalin

NEAR MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi security forces on Thursday began the second phase of their offensive against Islamic State militants in Mosul, pushing from three directions into eastern districts where the battle has been deadlocked for nearly a month.

Since the offensive to capture Mosul began 10 weeks ago, counter-terrorism forces have retaken a quarter of the city, the jihadists’ last major stronghold in Iraq, but their advance has been slow and troops on other fronts have made little progress.

The campaign, the biggest ground operation in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein, entered its first significant pause earlier this month for a planned “operational refit”.

But on Thursday, more than 5,000 soldiers and militarised federal police troops who had redeployed from Mosul’s southern outskirts entered half a dozen southeastern neighbourhoods, while counter-terrorism forces advanced in al-Quds and Karama districts after receiving reinforcements.

Army forces pushed simultaneously towards the northern city limits. U.S. military advisers were seen watching operations.

“At 0700 this morning the three fronts began advancing towards the city centre. The operation is ongoing today and tomorrow and until we liberate the eastern side of the city completely,” Lieutenant General Ali Freiji, who was overseeing army operations in the north, told Reuters.

The fall of Mosul would probably spell the end for Islamic State’s ambition to rule over millions of people in a self-styled caliphate, but fighters could still mount a traditional insurgency in Iraq, and plot or inspire attacks on the West.

An officer from an elite Interior Ministry unit said on Thursday it was advancing alongside federal police in Mosul’s Intisar district. Islamic State resisted with sniper and machine gun fire, he said.

A plume of white smoke, likely to be from an air strike, rose from a southeastern district on Thursday morning while at the northern front heavy gunfire was audible and a suicide car bomb was disabled by the Iraqi army before reaching its target.

State TV said Islamic State defences were collapsing in the areas of Salam, Intisar, Wahda, Palestine and al-Quds and that fighters’ bodies filled the streets there.

The government’s accounts are difficult to confirm since the authorities have increasingly restricted the foreign news media’s access to the battle fronts and areas retaken from Islamic State in and around Mosul without providing a reason.

The military has not entered the city’s western side, whose built-up markets and narrow alleyways dating back more than two millennia will likely complicate advances.

DEEPER U.S. ENGAGEMENT

The battle for Mosul involves 100,000 Iraqi troops, members of the Kurdish security forces and Shi’ite militiamen.

U.S. commanders have said in recent weeks that their military advisers, part of an international coalition fighting Islamic State, will embed more extensively with Iraqi forces.

Some of them were spotted on a rooftop behind the front lines on Thursday, advising Iraqi commanders and watching over the operations.

An army colonel said Iraqi forces had suffered few casualties so far.

“The orders from the senior commanders are clear: no halting, no retreat until we reach the fourth bridge and link up with counter-terrorism units,” he said.

The coalition bombed the last remaining bridge connecting the eastern and western parts of Mosul late on Monday in a bid to block Islamic State from redeploying and resupplying its fighters across the Tigris River.

“The enemy is currently isolated inside the left (eastern) bank of Mosul,” Yahia Rassol, a military spokesman, said on state TV. “In the coming days, Iraqi forces will liberate the entire left bank of Mosul and after that we will tackle the right.”

The United Nations has previously expressed concern that the destruction of Mosul’s bridges could obstruct the evacuation of civilians. Up to 1.5 million are thought to remain inside.

Three residents emerged from a northern village on Thursday, including an old man who sat down in the road and wept. He said his wife had been shot dead by Islamic State when she went to collect water a day earlier. Iraqi forces searched the civilians and let them continue to a nearby village.

Mosul, the largest city held by Islamic State anywhere across its once vast territorial holdings in Iraq and neighbouring Syria, has been held by the group since its fighters drove the U.S.-trained Iraqi army out in June 2014.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who previously pledged to retake Mosul by the end of the year, said this week it would take another three months to rout Islamic State in Iraq.

The operation has been slowed by concern to avoid casualties among civilians, who despite food and water shortages have mostly stayed in their homes rather than fleeing as was initially expected. More than 114,00 have been displaced so far, according to the United Nations.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Saif Hameed in Baghdad; Editing by Alison Williams)

Erdogan says U.S.-led coalition gives support to terrorist groups in Syria

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during his meeting with mukhtars at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey,

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he has evidence that U.S.-led coalition forces give support to terrorist groups including the Islamic State and Kurdish militant groups YPG and PYD, he said on Tuesday.

“They were accusing us of supporting Daesh (Islamic State),” he told a press conference in Ankara.

“Now they give support to terrorist groups including Daesh, YPG, PYD. It’s very clear. We have confirmed evidence, with pictures, photos and videos,” he said.

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Russia, Pakistan, China warn of increased Islamic State threat in Afghanistan

Islamic State flag

By Peter Hobson

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia, China and Pakistan warned on Tuesday that the influence of Islamic State (IS) was growing in Afghanistan and that the security situation there was deteriorating.

Representatives from the three countries, meeting in Moscow, also agreed to invite the Afghan government to such talks in the future, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

“(The three countries) expressed particular concern about the rising activity in the country of extremist groups including the Afghan branch of IS,” ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters after the meeting.

The United States, which still has nearly 10,000 troops in Afghanistan more than 15 years after the Islamist Taliban were toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces, was not invited to the Moscow talks.

The gathering, the third in a series of consultations between Russia, China and Pakistan that has so far excluded Kabul, is likely to deepen worries in Washington that it is being sidelined in negotiations over Afghanistan’s future.

Officials in Kabul and Washington have said that Russia is deepening its ties with Taliban militants fighting the government, though Moscow has denied providing aid to the insurgents.

Zakharova said Russia, China and Pakistan had “noted the deterioration of the security situation (in Afghanistan)”.

The three countries agreed a “flexible approach to remove certain figures from sanctions lists as part of efforts to foster a peaceful dialogue between Kabul and the Taliban movement,” she added.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani last month asked the United Nations to add the Taliban’s new leader to its sanctions list, further undermining a stalled peace process.

Earlier on Tuesday, Afghan Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ahmad Shekib Mostaghni said Kabul had not been properly briefed about the Moscow meeting.

“Discussion about the situation in Afghanistan, even if well-intentioned, in the absence of Afghans cannot help the real situation and also raises serious questions about the purpose of such meetings,” he said.

A number of Afghan provincial capitals have come under pressure from the Taliban this year while Afghan forces have been suffering high casualty rates, with more than 5,500 killed in the first eight months of 2016.

An offshoot of Islamic State has claimed responsibility for several attacks in the last year.

(Reporting by Peter Hobson and Mirwais Harooni; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Gareth Jones)

FBI warns of possible Islamic State-inspired attacks in U.S.

A member of the New York Police Department's Counterterrorism Bureau patrols the Union Square Holiday market following the Berlin Christmas market attacks in Manhattan, New York City

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. federal authorities cautioned local law enforcement on Friday to be aware that supporters of Islamic State have been calling for their sympathizers to attack holiday gatherings in the United States, including churches, a law enforcement official said.

The warning, issued in a bulletin to local law enforcement, said there were no known specific, credible threats.

The notice from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security was issued out of an abundance of caution after a publicly available list of U.S. churches was published on pro-Islamic State websites.

“The FBI is aware of the recent link published online that urges attacks against U.S. churches. As with similar threats, the FBI is tracking this matter while we investigate its credibility,” the FBI said in a statement.

Islamic State sympathizers “continue aspirational calls for attacks on holiday gatherings, including targeting churches,” CNN quoted the bulletin as saying. The notice describes different signs of suspicious activity for which police should be alert, it said.

(Reporting by David Alexander; Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Iraqis celebrate first Christmas near Mosul after Islamic State pushback

A Christian woman inspects a home in the town of Bartella east of Mosul, Iraq, after it was liberated from Islamic State militants

By Maher Chmaytelli

BARTELLA, Iraq (Reuters) – A few hundred Iraqi Christians flocked on Saturday to Bartella, a northern town recently retaken from Islamic State, to celebrate Christmas for the first time since 2013.

Bartella, once home to thousands of Assyrian Christians, emptied in August 2014 when it fell to Islamic State’s blitz across large parts of Iraq and neighboring Syria. Iraqi forces took it back in the first few days of the U.S.-backed offensive that started in October.

“It is a mix of sadness and happiness,” said Bishop Mussa Shemali before a Christmas eve ceremony at Mar Shimoni church, which has been badly damaged, with crosses taken down and statues of saints defaced.

“We are sad to see what has been done to our holiest places by our own countrymen, but at the same time we are happy to celebrate the first mass in two years.”

The region of Nineveh is one of the most ancient settlements of Christianity, going back nearly 2,000 years.

Islamic State targeted all non-Sunni Muslim groups living under its rule, also inflicting harsh punishment on Sunnis who wouldn’t abide by its extreme interpretation of Islam.

The region’s Christians were given an ultimatum: pay a tax, convert to Islam, or die by the sword. Most of them fled to the autonomous Kurdish region, across the Zab river, to the east.

It will be some time before people can return to the town which remains without basic services, and many buildings still bear the scars of the fighting.

“This is the best day of my life. Sometimes I thought it would never come,” said Shrook Tawfiq, a 52-year-old housewife displaced to the nearby Kurdish city of Erbil.

The front line in the battle to retake Mosul – Islamic State’s last major stronghold in Iraq, has moved a few kilometers to the west, into eastern districts where the militants are dug in among civilians, fighting off the advance of elite Iraqi units with suicide car bombs, mortars and snipers.

More than one million people are estimated to live in areas of the city that remain under militant control, complicating the war plans of the Iraqi army and the U.S.-led coalition providing air and ground support.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Adrian Croft)

Asia on Christmas alert as police foil two suspected bomb plots

Indonesian police stand guard with their sniffer dogs providing security ahead of the Christmas and New Years holiday at Gubeng station, Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia December 23, 2016 in this photo taken

y Fransiska Nangoy and Panarat Thepgumpanat

JAKARTA/BANGKOK (Reuters) – Security forces across Asia were on alert on Friday ahead of the Christmas and New Year holidays, as police in Australia and Indonesia said they had foiled bomb plots and Malaysian security forces arrested suspected militants.

Australian police said they had prevented attacks on prominent sites in Melbourne on Christmas Day that authorities described as “an imminent terrorist event” inspired by Islamic State.

The announcement came after an attack in Berlin in which a truck smashed through a Christmas market on Monday, killing 12 people. The suspect was killed in a pre-dawn shoot-out with police in Milan on Friday, Italy’s interior minister said.

In Indonesia, where Islamic State’s first attack in Southeast Asia killed four people in Jakarta in January, at least 14 people were being interrogated over suspected suicide bomb plots targeting the presidential palace in Jakarta and another undisclosed location, police said.

Anti-terrorism police killed three suspects in a gunfight on Wednesday on the outskirts of the capital, Jakarta.

Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, would deploy 85,000 police and 15,000 military staff for the Christmas and New Year period, police said.

Moderate Indonesian Muslim groups were helping authorities secure Christmas celebrations amid heightened religious tension after the Christian governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, went on trial on a charge of blasphemy against Islam, which he denies.

Hardline group Islamic Defenders Front swept into shopping centers in the city of Surabaya, in East Java, last week to make sure Muslim staff were not forced by employers to wear Santa hats or other Christmas gear.

In West Java, a group stopped a Christmas event as it was being held in a public building rather than in a church.

In Jakarta, about 300 volunteers from Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia’s biggest moderate Muslim group, will join police in overseeing security.

“The focus is against terrorism, especially in Jakarta and Bali, because these are the traditional targets,” Indonesia police chief Tito Karnavian told reporters.

The largely Hindu island of Bali, famed for its temples and beaches, suffered Indonesia’s most serious militant attack, in 2002, when 202 people were killed, most of them foreigners, by bombs at a bar.

WARNINGS, PATROLS

In the Pakistani city of Lahore, where 72 people were killed in an Easter Day bombing targeting Christians this year, police said 2,000 Muslim volunteers had been trained to help with security.

“A three-layer security will be arranged around every church in Lahore,” said Haider Ashraf, the city’s deputy inspector general of police.

He said and CCTV cameras were monitoring churches and other gathering places for Christians, who make up about 1 percent of Muslim-majority Pakistan’s 190 million people.

Police in Muslim-majority Malaysia, where Islamic State claimed responsibility for a grenade attack on a bar on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur in June, said this week they had arrested seven people for suspected links to the militant group.

Police will monitor transport hubs, entertainment centers and tourist spots.

“We try not to have too much physical presence in public and focus more on prevention,” deputy home minister Nur Jazlan Mohamed said. “People should feel free to enjoy their holidays.”

The U.S. embassy in India warned this week of an increased threat to places frequented by foreigners.

In mostly Muslim Bangladesh, where a militant group killed 22 people, most of them foreigners, at a Dhaka cafe in July, police would be patrolling near churches, an officer said.

Mostly Buddhist Thailand plans to have more than 100,000 police on patrol until mid-January, police said, adding it was an increase from last year, without giving details.

Thai deputy national police spokesman Kissana Phathancharoen said no intelligence pointed to a possible attack but “we will not let our guard down”.

Multi-ethnic Singapore, a major commercial, banking and travel hub that is home to many Western expatriates, will deploy police at tourist and shopping areas. Police said bags may be checked.

(Additional reporting by Mubasher Bukhari in LAHORE, Pakistan; Rozanna Latiff in KUALA LUMPUR, Aradhana Aravindan in SINGAPORE, Serajul Quadir in DHAKA and Tommy Wilkes in NEW DELHI; Writing by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Islamic State claims suicide car bombs that killed at least 23 east of Mosul

A man wounded in a bomb attack in Kokjali, receives treatment at a hospital in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil,

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Islamic State claimed three suicide car bombs that killed at least 15 civilians and eight Iraqi policemen on Thursday in an eastern suburb of Mosul, according to a military statement.

The attacks targeted Kokjali, a suburb that the authorities said they had retaken from the jihadists almost two months ago.

A military spokesman said the car bombs went off in a market.

The U.S.-backed assault on Mosul, the jihadists’ last major stronghold in Iraq, was launched by a 100,000-strong alliance of local forces on Oct. 17. It has become the biggest military operation in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Islamic State militants retreating from the military offensive have repeatedly shelled areas after they are retaken by the army, killing or wounding scores of residents fleeing in the opposite direction.

Four Iraqi aid workers and at least seven civilians were killed by mortar fire this week during aid distribution in Mosul, the United Nations said on Thursday.

“People waiting for aid are already vulnerable and need help. They should be protected, not attacked,” said Lise Grande, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq.

“All parties to the conflict – all parties – have an obligation to uphold international humanitarian law and ensure that civilians survive and receive the assistance they need.”

Elite army forces have captured a quarter of the city but the advance has faced weeks of fierce counter-attacks from the militants.

The authorities do not release figures for civilian or military casualties, but medical officials say dozens of people are wounded each day in the battle for Mosul.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; editing by Ralph Boulton)