Tag Archives: War

How Iran closed the Mosul ‘horseshoe’ and changed Iraq war

Iraqi army members ride in a military vehicle in Bartila, Iraq

By Dominic Evans, Maher Chmaytelli and Patrick Markey

BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – In the early days of the assault on Islamic State in Mosul, Iran successfully pressed Iraq to change its battle plan and seal off the city, an intervention which has since shaped the tortuous course of the conflict, sources briefed on the plan say.

The original campaign strategy called for Iraqi forces to close in around Mosul in a horseshoe formation, blocking three fronts but leaving open the fourth – to the west of the city leading to Islamic State territory in neighboring Syria.

That model, used to recapture several Iraqi cities from the ultra-hardline militants in the last two years, would have left fighters and civilians a clear route of escape and could have made the Mosul battle quicker and simpler.

But Tehran, anxious that retreating fighters would sweep back into Syria just as Iran’s ally President Bashar al-Assad was gaining the upper hand in his country’s five-year civil war, wanted Islamic State crushed and eliminated in Mosul.

Displaced Iraqis, fleeing villages under Islamic State control, sit in a van as security forces backed by tribal militias battle to retake area on the eastern bank of the river Tigris, Iraq

Displaced Iraqis, fleeing villages under Islamic State control, sit in a van as security forces backed by tribal militias battle to retake area on the eastern bank of the river Tigris, Iraq December 7, 2016. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

The sources say Iran lobbied for Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization fighters to be sent to the western front to seal off the link between Mosul and Raqqa, the two main cities of Islamic State’s self-declared cross-border caliphate.

That link is now broken. For the first time in Iraq’s two-and-half-year, Western-backed drive to defeat Islamic State, several thousand militants have little choice but to fight to the death, and 1 million remaining Mosul citizens have no escape from the front lines creeping ever closer to the city center.

“If you corner your enemy and don’t leave an escape, he will fight till the end,” said a Kurdish official involved in planning the Mosul battle.

“In the west, the initial idea was to have a corridor … but the Hashid (Popular Mobilisation) insisted on closing this loophole to prevent them going to Syria,” he told Reuters.

The battle for Mosul is the biggest in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003. In all, around 100,000 people are fighting on the government side, including Iraqi soldiers and police, “peshmerga” troops of the autonomous Kurdish region and fighters in the Popular Mobilisation units. A U.S.-led international coalition is providing air and ground support.

Iraqi army commanders have repeatedly said that the presence of civilians on the battlefield has complicated and slowed their seven-week-old operation, restricting air strikes and the use of heavy weapons in populated areas.

They considered a change in strategy to allow civilians out, but rejected the idea because they feared that fleeing residents could be massacred by the militants, who have executed civilians to prevent them from escaping other battles. Authorities and aid groups would also struggle to deal with a mass exodus.

KILL BOX

Planning documents drawn up by humanitarian organizations before the campaign, seen by Reuters, show they prepared camps in Kurdish-controlled areas of Syria for around 90,000 refugees expected to head west out of Mosul.

“Iran didn’t agree and insisted that no safe corridor be allowed to Syria,” said a humanitarian worker. “They wanted the whole region west of Mosul to be a kill box.”

Hisham al-Hashemi, an Iraqi analyst on Islamist militants who was briefed on the battle plan in advance, also said it initially envisaged leaving one flank open.

“The first plan had the shape of a horseshoe, allowing for the population and the militants to retreat westward as the main thrust of the offensive came from the east,” he said.

About a week before the launch of the campaign, Lebanese Shi’ite Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, a close ally of Iran, accused the United States of planning to allow Islamic State a way out to Syria.

“The Iraqi army and popular forces must defeat it in Mosul, otherwise, they will be obliged to move to eastern Syria in order to fight the terrorist group,” he said. Hezbollah is fighting in support of Assad in Syria.

Hashid spokesman Karim al-Nuri denied that Tehran was behind the decision to deploy the Shi’ite fighters west of Mosul.

“Iran has no interest here. The majority of these statements are mere analysis – they are simply not true,” he said.

Nevertheless, securing territory west of Mosul by the Iranian-backed militias has other benefits for Iran’s allies, by giving the Shi’ite fighters a launchpad into neighboring Syria to support Assad.

If Islamic State is defeated in Syria and Iraq, Tehran’s allies would gain control of an arc of territory stretching from Iran itself across the Middle East to Lebanon and the Mediterranean coast.

 

American vehicles are seen in Bartila, Iraq December 7, 2016. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

American vehicles are seen in Bartila, Iraq December 7, 2016. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

RUSSIAN PRESSURE

Iran was not the only country pressing for the escape to be closed west of Mosul. Russia, another powerful Assad ally, also wanted to block any possible movement of militants into Syria, said Hashemi. The Russian defence ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

One of Assad’s biggest enemies, France, was also concerned that hundreds of fighters linked to attacks in Paris and Brussels might escape. The French have contributed ground and air support to the Mosul campaign.

A week after the campaign was launched, French President Francois Hollande said any flow of people out of Mosul would include “terrorists who will try to go further, to Raqqa in particular”.

Still, the battle plan did not foresee closing the road to the west of Mosul until Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi agreed in late October to despatch the Popular Mobilisation militias.

“The government agreed to Iran’s request, thinking that it would take a long time for the Hashid to get to the road to Syria, and during that time the escape route would be open and the battle would still proceed as planned,” Hashemi said.

The Hashid move to cut the western corridor was announced on Oct. 28, 11 days after the start of the wider Mosul campaign. Fighters made swift progress, sweeping up from a base south of Mosul to seal off the western route out of the city.

Abadi “was surprised to see them reaching the road in just a few days,” Hashemi said. “The battle has taken a different shape since then – no food, no fuel is reaching Mosul and Daesh (Islamic State) fighters are bent on fighting to the end.”

IRAQ STRONGHOLD

Once the Iraqi Shi’ite militia advance west of Mosul had begun, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi told his followers there could be no retreat from the city where he first proclaimed his caliphate in July, 2014.

Those tempted to flee should “know that the value of staying on your land with honor is a thousand times better than the price of retreating with shame,” Baghdadi said in an audio recording released five days after the Shi’ite militias announced they were moving to cut off the last route out.

Since then his fighters have launched hundreds of suicide car bombs, mortar barrages and sniper attacks against the advancing forces, using a network of tunnels under residential areas and using civilians as human shields, Iraqi soldiers say.

A senior U.S. officer in international coalition which is supporting the campaign said that waging war amidst civilians would always be tough, but the Baghdad government was best placed to decide on strategy.

“They’ve got 15 years of war (experience)… I can’t think of anyone more calibrated to make that decision and as a result that why as a coalition we supported the government of Iraq’s decision,” Brigadier General Scott Efflandt, deputy commanding general in the coalition, told Reuters.

“The opening and closing of that corridor, hypothetically, realistically, did not fundamentally change the plans of the battle,” he added. “It changes how we prosecute the fight, but that does not necessarily make it easier or harder.”

But the Kurdish official was less sanguine, saying the battle for Mosul was now “more difficult” and could descend into a long drawn out siege similar to those seen in Syria.

It could “turn Mosul into Aleppo,” he said.

(Reporting by Patrick Markey and Maher Chmaytelli in Erbil and Dominic Evans in Baghdad; additional reporting by John Irish in Paris and Tatiana Ustinova in Moscow; writing by Dominic Evans; editing by Peter Graff)

U.N. launches record $22.2 billion humanitarian appeal for 2017

War in Aleppo

By Umberto Bacchi

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The United Nations launched a record humanitarian appeal on Monday, asking for $22.2 billion in 2017 to help almost 93 million people hit by conflicts and natural disasters.

More than half of the money will be used to address the needs of people caught up in crises in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and South Sudan, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

The appeal followed a trend of steady increases that have seen requests for funds grow almost three-fold from $7.9 billion in 2011.

“The scale of humanitarian crises today is greater than at any time since the United Nations was founded,” U.N. humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien said in a statement.

“Not in living memory have so many people needed our support and solidarity to survive and live in safety and dignity”.

Several countries, including Afghanistan, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia have issued emergency appeals almost annually for the past 25 years and some faced worsening crises in 2017, the U.N. said.

In 2016, the U.N. sought $22.1 billion, having initially appealed for $20.1 billion but a shortfall in donations meant the appeal was only 51 percent funded as of Nov. 30.

“Sadly, with persistently escalating humanitarian needs, the gap between what has to be done to save and protect more people today and what humanitarians are financed to do and can access is growing ever wider,” OCHA head O’Brien wrote.

As humanitarian needs continue to rise, aid workers are increasingly at risk of targeted attacks and their efforts are hampered by reduced access, growing disrespect for human rights and flagrant violations of international humanitarian law, O’Brien said.

In Syria, humanitarian needs were expected to “grow exponentially” if no political solution was found to the nearly six-year-old conflict, with 13.5 million people requiring aid.

In Afghanistan, where government forces are struggling to contain a Taliban insurgency, 1.8 million people, mostly children, will require treatment for acute malnutrition next year, according to the appeal.

The political crisis in Burundi will see the number of people in need of urgent support triple to about three million.

The U.N. last week doubled its appeal for northeast Nigeria to $1 billion, hoping to reach nearly 7 million people hit by the Islamist militant Boko Haram insurgency, including 75,000 children at risk of starving to death.

“Funding in support of the plans will translate into life-saving food assistance to people on the brink of starvation in the Lake Chad Basin and South Sudan,” said O’Brien.

Long-term conflicts resulted in higher costs partially because falling state revenues required aid agencies to offer healthcare, education and other services traditionally provided by governments, said Paul Knox Clarke, head of research and communications at ALNAP, a humanitarian action learning network.

“You have a situation where the humanitarian funding is basically this sort of welfare service provision,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

(Reporting by Umberto Bacchi @UmbertoBacchi, Editing by Astrid Zweynert and Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Russia says to start talks with U.S. on Aleppo rebel withdrawal

smoke rises after air strike

By Ellen Francis, Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Maria Kiselyova

BEIRUT/MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Russian government said on Monday it would start talks with Washington on a rebel withdrawal from Aleppo this week as Russian-backed Syrian forces fought to seize more territory from rebels who are struggling to avoid a major defeat.

The latest army attack, which saw fierce clashes around the Old City, aims to cut off another area of rebel control in eastern Aleppo and tighten the noose on opposition-held districts where tens of thousands of people are trapped.

Advances in recent weeks have brought Damascus, backed militarily by Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, closer to recapturing Syria’s second largest city before the nearly six-year war and a prize long sought by President Bashar al-Assad.

The rebels are now reduced to an area just kilometers across.

While Assad’s allies have in the past year turned the battle in his favor, Western and regional states backing the rebels have been unwilling or unable to prevent a major defeat for groups who have fought for years to topple the Syrian leader.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said talks with the United States on the withdrawal of rebels would begin in Geneva on Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning. There was no immediate comment from Washington, which has backed some of the rebels.

“Those armed groups who refuse to leave eastern Aleppo will be considered to be terrorists,” Lavrov told a news conference. “We will treat them as such, as terrorists, as extremists and will support a Syrian army operation against those criminal squads.”

While the rebels have said they will not leave, one opposition official, who declined to be identified, conceded they may have no alternative for the sake of civilians who have been under siege for five months and faced relentless government bombardments.

“The people are paying a high price, with no state or organization intervening,” the official said, adding that this was his personal assessment based on reports from the city.

With narrow alleyways, big mansions and covered markets the ancient city of Aleppo became a UNESCO heritage site in 1986. Many historic buildings have been destroyed in the fighting.

BLACK SMOKE RISES NEAR CITADEL

Responding to Russia’s demand for their withdrawal, rebels told U.S. officials on Saturday they would not leave. Reiterating that position on Monday, rebel official Zakaria Malahifji said, “No person in his right mind, who has any sense of responsibility and patriotism, would leave his city.”

“The Russians are trying to do everything they can to make people leave. This is far from reality,” he said, speaking to Reuters from Turkey.

Insurgents, meanwhile, fought back ferociously inside Aleppo. Some of the fighting took place within a kilometre of the ancient citadel, a large fortress built on a mound, and around the historic Old City.

Heavy gunfire could be heard from the Old City and smoke from mortar shell blasts rose from the area, Reuters journalists in a government-held western district said.

Rebels appeared on the verge of being driven from the al-Shaar neighborhood after new advances by Syrian government forces on Sunday. But rebels said they had mounted a counter-attack on Monday, and were recovering ground in some areas.

Clashes raged in the Old City itself, which has long been split between government- and rebel-held areas, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

A Syrian army officer told Reuters intense fighting was taking place around the Old City.

State television broadcast a report from inside a hospital complex seized from rebels on Sunday. The hospital is strategically important because it overlooks surrounding areas held by insurgents.

A government takeover of the eye hospital complex and areas stretching west from there to the citadel would cut the remaining rebel-held areas of eastern Aleppo in two, further isolating embattled rebel groups. Rebels said they were fighting back in that area too on Monday.

REBELS LAUNCH COUNTER-ATTACKS

“They (rebels) are trying to take back all the areas the regime took yesterday (including) the eye hospital, al-Myassar,” Malahifji said.

Moscow said a rebel attack on a mobile military hospital killed one Russian medic and wounded two others.

The United Nations says more than 200,000 people might still be trapped in rebel-held areas, affected by severe food and aid shortages. “We need to reach them,” U.N. aid chief Stephen O’Brien said in Geneva on Monday.

“People have been eking what they can, prices have skyrocketed so there is a real and severe shortage of foodstuffs.”

Russia is expected to veto a U.N. resolution on Monday which calls for a seven-day ceasefire, with Lavrov saying a truce was counter-productive because it would allow rebels to regroup.

State TV said rebel shelling killed seven people in government-held areas of Aleppo on Monday.

More than 300 people have been killed in government bombardments of rebel-held areas since mid-November, and 70 have died in rebel shellings, the Syrian Observatory says.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry in Beirut, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, Firas Makdesi in Aleppo, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Writing by John Davison; Editing by Tom Perry and Peter Millership)

Mosul residents fear cold and hunger of winter siege

People fleeing Islamic State stronghold in Mosul

By Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – No food or fuel has reached Mosul in nearly a week and the onset of rain and cold weather threatens a tough winter for more than a million people still in Islamic State-held areas of the city, residents said on Saturday.

Iraqi troops waging a six-week-old offensive against the militants controlling Mosul have advanced into eastern city districts, while other forces have sealed Mosul’s southern and northern approaches and 10 days ago blocked the road west.

But their advance has been hampered by waves of counter-attacks from the ultra-hardline Islamists who have controlled the city since mid-2014 and built a network of tunnels in preparation for their defense of north Iraq’s largest city.

The slow progress means the campaign is likely to drag on throughout the winter, and has prompted warnings from aid groups that civilians face a near complete siege in the coming months.

A trader in Mosul, speaking by telephone, said no new food or fuel supplies had reached the city since Sunday.

Despite attempts by the militants to keep prices stable, and the arrest last week of dozens of shopkeepers accused of hiking prices, the trader said food had become more expensive and fuel prices had tripled.

“We’ve been living under a real state of siege for a week,” said one resident of west Mosul, several miles (km) from the frontline neighborhoods on the east bank of the Tigris river.

“Two days ago the electricity generator supplying the neighborhood stopped working because of lack of fuel. Water is cut and food prices have risen and it’s terribly cold. We fear the days ahead will be much worse”.

A pipeline supplying water to around 650,000 people in Mosul was hit during fighting this week between the army and Islamic State. A local official said it could not be fixed because the damage was in an area still being fought over.

Winter conditions will also hit the nearly 80,000 people registered by the United Nations as displaced since the start of the Mosul campaign. That number excludes many thousands more who were forcibly moved by Islamic State, or fled from the fighting deeper into territory under its control.

MILITANTS COUNTER ATTACK

Islamic State authorities, trying to portray a sense of normality, released pictures which they said showed a Mosul market on Friday. It showed a crowd of people and a stall selling vegetable oil and canned food but no fresh produce.

They also said they carried out several counter attacks in the last 24 hours against Iraqi troops in eastern Mosul and the mainly Shi’ite Popular Mobilisation forces who have taken territory to the west of the city.

Amaq news agency, which is close to Islamic State, said they retook half of the Shaimaa district in southeast of the city on Friday, destroyed four army bases in the eastern al-Qadisiya al-Thaniya neighborhood and seized ammunition from fleeing soldiers in al-Bakr district, also in the east.

A source in the Counter Terrorism Services, which are spearheading the army offensive, said Islamic State exploited the bad weather and cloud cover, which prevented air support from a U.S.-led international coalition.

He said the militants had taken back some ground, but predicted their gains would be short-lived.

“This is not the first time it happens. We withdraw to avoid civilian losses and then regain control. They can’t hold territory for long,” the source said.

Amaq also said Islamic State fighters waged attacks on Saturday against the Popular Mobilisation paramilitary units near the town of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, showing footage of two damaged vehicles, one with interior ministry markings on it.

A spokesman for the militias said those attacks had been repelled. “Daesh attacked at dawn to try to control the village Tal Zalat,” said Karim Nouri. “Clashes continued for two hours, until Daesh withdrew, leaving bodies (of dead fighters) behind.”

In Baghdad, a car bomb blew up in a crowded market in the center of the city on Saturday, killing seven people and wounding 15, police and medical sources said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Islamic State fighters have stepped up attacks in the Iraqi capital and other cities since the start of the Mosul operations.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi launched the Mosul offensive on Oct. 17, aiming to crush Islamic State in the largest city it controls in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

The campaign pits a 100,000-strong U.S.-backed coalition of army troops, special forces, federal police, Kurdish fighters and the Popular Mobilisation forces against a few thousand militants in the city.

Defeat would deal a heavy blow to Islamic State’s self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria, announced by its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from a Mosul mosque two years ago.

(Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Clelia Oziel)

Russia says will treat as terrorists rebels who refuse to leave Aleppo

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday he was confident Moscow and Washington can reach a deal in talks this week on the withdrawal of all rebels from the eastern part of the Syrian city of Aleppo.

He told a news conference once the deal was reached, rebels who stay in the besieged eastern part of the city will be treated as terrorists and Russia will support the operation of the Syrian army against them.

“Those armed groups who refuse to leave eastern Aleppo will be considered to be terrorists,” Lavrov said. “We will treat them as such, as terrorists, as extremists and will support a Syrian army operation against those criminal squads.”

Russia and the United States will start talks on the withdrawal in Geneva on Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has sent his proposals on routes and timing of the withdrawal, Lavrov said.

“We believe that when the Americans proposed their initiative for militants to leave eastern Aleppo, they realized what steps they and their allies, who have an influence on militants stuck in eastern Aleppo, would have to take.”

He added that a United Nations resolution on a ceasefire would be counterproductive because a ceasefire would allow rebels to regroup.

(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova,; writing by Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Christian Lowe)

Air strikes kill 73 in rebel-held Idlib province: war monitor

excavator removing rubble after air strikes

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Air strikes killed at least 73 people in rebel-held Idlib province, including 38 in the city of Maarat al-Numan, on Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group monitoring the war, reported.

Russian war planes and Syrian military jets and helicopters have been conducting heavy strikes for months against rebels in Idlib, southwest of Aleppo. Insurgents had previously tried to get help and supplies to fellow rebels in the city from Idlib.

The Observatory said the death toll in Maarat al-Numan included five children and six members of a single family.

The bombardment included barrel bombs, improvised ordnance made from oil drums filled with explosives and dropped from helicopters, the monitor said. The Syrian military and Russia both deny using barrel bombs, whose use has been criticized by the United Nations.

Syria’s civil war, which began in 2011, pits President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, Iran and Shi’ite Muslim militias against mostly Sunni rebels including groups supported by the United States, Turkey and Gulf kingdoms.

Jihadist militants are also fighting alongside the insurgents, including Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, which has a large presence in Idlib province and was known as the Nusra Front until July when it broke its formal allegiance to al Qaeda.

Russia says its air campaign, which began in September 2015, is aimed at preventing jihadists, including both Fateh al-Sham and the Islamic State group, from gaining more territory in Syria that could be used to mount attacks overseas.

(Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Sunni tribesmen battling Islamic State demand federalism in Iraq

Members of the Lions of the Tigris, a group of Sunni Arab fighters and part of the Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Comimittee) take part during a military operation against Islamic State militants in Shayyalah al-Imam, Iraq

SHAYYALAH AL-IMAM, Iraq (Reuters) – As mortar bombs landed ever closer, Sunni tribal fighters preparing to attack Islamic State seemed more preoccupied by the failures of Iraq’s political class than the militants trying to kill them.

The men – and one woman – from the Lions of the Tigris unit gathered on Wednesday in Shayyalah al-Imam, a village near Mosul, with some of their leaders expressing deep distrust of the politicians and saying Iraq’s governance must change once Islamic State is defeated.

“Iraq needs serious reforms,” said Sheikh Mohammed al-Jibouri, the top commander of the tribesmen. “Only serious reforms will lead to the unity of Iraq.”

The unit is part of the Popular Mobilisation Committee, or Hashid Shaabi, which was formed to take on Islamic State after the hardline Sunni group swept through northern Iraq in 2014, facing little resistance from the army.

Hashid Shaabi is mostly comprised of Shi’ites but there are also Sunnis, such as the 655-strong Lions of the Tigris unit.

Their efforts along with government soldiers to capture several villages are part of an offensive to oust Islamic State from its stronghold of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city.

On the surface, their participation lends credibility to the Shi’ite-led government in Baghdad, accused by Sunnis of marginalising their minority community. It denies the accusation.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has been struggling to persuade Sunni tribesmen who helped U.S. forces defeat Al Qaeda during the 2003-11 occupation to join the battle against Islamic State. He has declared a war on corruption in government and army but faces resistance.

The show of force in Shayyalah al-Imam points to progress, with soldiers and tribesmen standing side-by-side.

But some of the men doubted the politicians have the resolve or desire to unify Iraq, gripped by sectarian bloodshed since the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein.

Another tribal commander, Abdel Rahman Ali, even saw Islamic State as part of an elaborate plot to weaken Sunnis, underlining the pervasive mistrust in Iraq.

“Everyone knows Islamic State will be defeated. The conspiracy was designed to hurt Iraq, especially Sunnis, after we liberate Mosul,” he told Reuters. “Our own politicians are behind it.”

UNITY OR PARTITION

Officials have said the Mosul offensive, the biggest ground operation since 2003, could make or break Iraq. If it inflames sectarian tensions in the predominantly Sunni city, the fighting could lead to Iraq’s partition, they warn.

But if the campaign goes smoothly and a new administration in Mosul is seen as non-sectarian, that could help the country to unite.

Ali said federalism modelled on the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq is the best option, even though that has created friction with Baghdad over oil resources.

Like many Sunnis, the minority who dominated under Saddam and then watched the majority Shi’ites rise to power, he is disillusioned with a governing system that allocates posts according to sects. Sunnis themselves are divided and lack a strong leadership, adding to Iraq’s fragmentation.

As the men spoke, Islamic State militants fired more mortar bombs towards their unit. One day earlier, suicide bombers attacked the area, a collection of bland cement houses choked by dust, overlooking the desert.

A few hundred metres away, soldiers stood on a rooftop, focused on two suspected car bombs in the distance.

Nashwan Sahn, a Sunni tribesmen who has been fighting Islamist militants in Iraq for 11 years, taking on al Qaeda and then Islamic State, kept warm at a small campfire where freshly-slaughtered chickens had been barbecued. A few raw livers lay scattered on a tray. Beside him was a Shi’ite soldier.

Both said they support Iraqi unity but neither had any faith in the politicians to manage the sectarian tensions which provoked a civil war in 2006-2007.

“Federalism would be good but only if we have good leaders,” said Sahn, who criticised all politicians including fellow Sunnis. “We liberate these villages where Sunnis live. Yet Sunni politicians who have constituents here have never visited us at the frontline.”

Miaad Madaad, the only female member of the Lions of the Tigris, clutched an AK-47 assault rifle and vowed to defeat Islamic State. “The last time they came to my house and threatened me I threw rocks at them and called them dogs,” she said proudly.

Islamic State militants beheaded her father-in-law and brother-in-law. But her story illustrates the sectarian and ethnic complexities and mistrust facing Iraq.

When she and her husband fled to the relatively stable Kurdish region earlier this year, he was arrested by Kurdish fighters who suspected him of being an Islamic State fighter.

(editing by David Stamp)

Iraqi forces say 1,000 Islamic State fighters killed in Mosul

Men sit on the ground as an Iraqi Special forces intelligence team check their ID cards as they search for Islamic State fighters in Mosul, Iraq

By Patrick Markey and Ulf Laessing

BARTELLA, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi special forces battling to clear Islamic State from eastern Mosul have killed nearly 1,000 militants but fighting has slowed as troops face a mobile enemy hidden among thousands of civilians in the city, a top commander said.

Six weeks into a major offensive, Iraqi forces have captured nearly half of eastern Mosul, moving from district to district against jihadist snipers, suicide attackers and car bombs.

Elite Iraqi troops, known as the “Golden Division”, are the only brigades to have entered Mosul from the east, with Iraqi army, federal police and Kurdish Peshmerga units surrounding the city to the north and south. Shi’ite militias are trying to complete the encirclement from the west.

The U.S.-trained Counter Terrorism Service unit breached Islamic State’s defenses at the end of October, but has been slowed by the militants’ mobile tactics and concern over civilian casualties preventing the use of tanks and heavy armor.

Major General Abdul Ghani al-Asadi, one of the commanders of the special forces, said troops had adapted their tactics, surrounding one district at a time to cut off the militants’ supplies and protect civilians.

“Progress was faster at the start. The reason is we were operating before in areas without residents,” Asadi told Reuters in Bartella, on Mosul’s outskirts.

“We have arrived in populated districts. So how do we protect civilians? We have sealed off district after district.”

He said around 990 militants had been killed in fighting in the east so far. He would not say how many casualties there were among government special forces.

“We have made changes to plans, partly due to the changing nature of the enemy … Daesh (Islamic State) is not based in one location, but moving from here to there,” he said.

“Tanks don’t work here, artillery is not effective. Planes from the coalition force and the air force are restricted because of the civilians.”

THOUSANDS DISPLACED

The Iraqi government has asked civilians in Mosul to stay at home during the offensive, as humanitarian organizations say they cannot cope with an influx of hundred of thousands of people displaced from the city.

More than one million people are believed to remain in the city, the largest in northern Iraq.

Defeating Islamic State in Mosul, Islamic State’s last major bastion in Iraq, is seen as vital to destroying the “caliphate” declared by the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, from the pulpit of Mosul’s Grand Mosque in July 2014.

But commanders have said the battle could take months. Dozens of districts must be taken in the east before attacking forces reach the Tigris River which splits Mosul into east and west. U.S. air strikes have taken out four of the five river bridges used by the militants.

Major General Najm al-Jubbouri, one of the army’s top commanders, told Reuters that the western part of the city could be the more dangerous.

To the south, Iraqi army brigades are now advancing slowly on the remaining Islamic State-held villages before reaching the city limits. To the west, the mostly Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias known as Popular Mobilisation have cut off the highway to Syria, but they have yet to close in on the city.

“The force left in front of us is small, unable to stop our advance. Their spirit is broken,” Asadi said.

“We have killed more than 992 fighters on our front plus more wounded … Their supplies and communications to the outside world are cut. They stage fewer suicide bombings.”

Iraqi military estimates initially put the number of insurgents in Mosul at 5,000 to 6,000, facing a 100,000-strong coalition force. But Asadi said the figure for the Islamic State presence may have been too high.

Iraqi authorities have not released estimates of civilian casualties but the United Nations says growing numbers of injured, both civilians and military, are overwhelming aid groups.

(Reporting by Patrick Markey; editing by Giles Elgood)

Civilians flee as Shi’ite groups close in on flashpoint town west of Mosul

Displace Iraqi family

By Isabel Coles and Saif Hameed

ERBIL/BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have fled Tal Afar as Shi’ite paramilitary groups close in the Islamic State-held town on the road between Mosul and Raqqa, the main cities of the militant group’s self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

The exodus from Tal Afar, 60 km (40 miles) west of Mosul, is causing concern among humanitarian organizations as some of the fleeing civilians are heading deeper into insurgents’ territory, where aid cannot be sent to them, provincial officials said.

Popular Mobilisation units, a coalition of mostly Iranian-trained and backed militias, are trying to encircle Tal Afar, a mostly ethnic Turkmen town, as part of the offensive to capture Mosul, the last major city stronghold of Islamic State in Iraq.

About 3,000 families have left the town, with about half heading southwest, toward Syria, and half northward, into Kurdish-held territory, said Nuraldin Qablan, a Tal Afar representative in the Nineveh provincial council, now based in the Kurdish capital Erbil.

“We ask Kurdish authorities to open a safe passage for them,” he told Reuters.

He said Islamic State started on Sunday night to allow people to leave after it fired mortars at Popular Mobilisation positions at the airport, south of the city, and Popular Mobilisation forces responded.

The offensive started on Oct. 17 with air and ground support from a U.S.-led coalition. It is turning into the most complex campaign in Iraq since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and empowered the nation’s Shi’ite majority.

The people fleeing Tal Afar are from the Sunni community, which makes up a majority in the Nineveh province in and around Mosul. The town also had a Shi’ite community, which fled in 2014 when the hardline Sunni group swept through the region.

Turkey is alarmed that regional rival Iran could extend its power through proxy groups to an area close to the Turkish and Syrian borders, where Ankara is backing rebels opposed to the Russian and Iranian-backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Citing its close ties to Tal Afar’s Turkmen’s population, Turkey has threatened to intervene to prevent revenge killings should Popular Mobilisation forces, known in Arabic as Hashid Shaabi, storm the town.

“People are fleeing due to the Hashid’s advance, there are great fears among the civilians,” said Qablan, who is also the deputy head of Nineveh’s provincial council.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi tried to allay fears of ethnic and sectarian killings in Tal Afar, saying any force sent to recapture it would reflect the city’s diversity.

Cutting the road to Tal Afar would seal off Mosul as the city is already surrounded to the north, south and east by Iraqi government and Kurdish peshmerga forces.

Iraq’s U.S.-trained Counter Terrorism Service unit breached Islamic State’s defenses in east Mosul at the end of October and is fighting to expand a foothold it gained there.

AIR STRIKES ON MOSUL

Iraqi military estimates put the number of insurgents in Mosul at 5,000 to 6,000, facing a 100,000-strong coalition of Iraqi government units, peshmerga fighters and Shi’ite militias.

Mosul’s capture is seen as crucial towards dismantling the caliphate, and Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, believed to have withdrawn to a remote area near the Syrian border, has told his fighters there can be no retreat.

A Mosul resident said air strikes have intensified on the western part of the city, which is divided by the Tigris river running through its center.

The strikes targeted an industrial area where Islamic State is thought to be making booby traps and transforming vehicles into car bombs, he said.

The militants are dug in among more than a million civilians as a defense tactic to hamper the strikes. They are moving around the city through tunnels, driving suicide car bombs into advancing troops and hitting them with sniper and mortar fire.

The Iraqi authorities did not release an overall estimate of the casualties, but the United Nations warned on Saturday that growing numbers of wounded civilians and military are overwhelming the capacity of the government and international aid groups.

More than 68,000 people are registered as displaced because of the fighting, moving from villages and towns around the city to government-held areas, according to U.N. estimates.

The figure does not include the thousands of people rounded up in villages around Mosul and forced to accompany Islamic State fighters to cover their retreat towards the city as human shields. It also does not included the 3,000 families which have fled Tal Afar.

In some cases, men of fighting age were separated from those groups and summarily killed, according to residents and rights groups.

(Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Death toll among Iran’s forces in Syrian war passes 1,000

Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) take part in an operation against Islamic State militants on the outskirts of the town of Hammam Al-Alil, south of Mosul, Iraq

By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

BEIRUT (Reuters) – More than 1,000 soldiers deployed by Iran to Syria to back the government side in its civil war have been killed, an Iranian official said, underlining Tehran’s increasing presence on front lines of the conflict.

It was a major increase in the reported death toll from just four months ago, when the Islamic Republic announced that 400 of its soldiers had died on Syria’s battlefields.

Iran has been sending fighters to Syria since the early stages of the more than five-year-old war to support its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, against rebels and Islamist militants including Islamic State trying to topple him.

Although many of the soldiers the Shi’ite Muslim Iran sends are its own nationals, it is casting its recruitment net wide, training and deploying Shi’ites from neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan as well. Half of the death toll reported in August were Afghan citizens.

“Now the number of Iran’s martyrs as defenders of shrine has exceeded 1,000,” Mohammadali Shahidi Mahallati, head of Iran’s Foundation of Martyrs, which offers financial support to the relatives of those killed fighting for Iran, was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.

Iran alludes to its fighters in Syria as “defenders of the shrine”, a reference to the Sayeda Zeinab mosque near Damascus, which is where a granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammad is said to be buried, as well as other shrines revered by Shi’ites.

Many Iranians initially opposed involvement in Syria’s war, harboring little sympathy for Assad. But now they are warming to the mission, believing that the Sunni jihadist Islamic State is a threat to the existence of their country that is best fought outside Iran’s borders.

With public opinion swinging increasingly behind the cause, numbers of volunteer fighters have soared far beyond what Tehran is prepared to deploy in Syria.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; editing by Mark Heinrich)