ISIS counterattacks miring Iraqis' push in Mosul

An Iraqi soldier feeds dogs Saturday in a village outside Mosul that was recently liberated from Islamic State militants.
An Iraqi soldier feeds dogs Saturday in a village outside Mosul that was recently liberated from Islamic State militants.

QABR AL-ABD, Iraq -- Under the cover of dust and fog, Islamic State militants counterattacked Iraqi positions to the south and west of the militant-held city of Mosul late Friday and into Saturday, according to Iraqi military commanders and officials.

The operation to retake Mosul officially began Oct. 17, but after initially swift battlefield successes, the progress of Iraqi forces later slowed in the face of fierce Islamic State counterattacks and concerns over the safety of civilians still inside the city.

The Islamic State has largely failed to push back Iraqi troops, but its counterattacks have inflicted high casualties on civilians and security forces and, in some cases, shaken morale.

The U.N. reported last week that nearly 2,000 members of the Iraqi forces were killed last month, but after coming under fire from the media arm of the Iraqi military, the U.N. announced Saturday that it would discontinue publishing casualty figures for Iraq's security forces.

West of Mosul, one Iraqi official said Islamic State militants breached the defenses of Shiite militiamen at a village outside the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar, which is west of Mosul. Reached by telephone near Tal Afar, he said the attack on the village of Sharea took place Friday night.

Fighting continued into Saturday, he added, without providing details.

An Islamic State statement said the attack on the village began with a suicide car bombing that killed and wounded "dozens" of militiamen. A "multi-pronged" attack on the village followed, forcing the militiamen to flee, it added. Islamic State fighters seized nine all-terrain vehicles fitted with machine guns, two Humvees, weapons and munitions from the militiamen, according to the statement released Saturday.

South of Mosul, the Islamic State carried out attacks on the positions of a tribal militia and a number of Iraqi army positions, according to an Iraqi official and commanders on the ground.

Along the Tigris river valley, Islamic State fighters moved under the cover of heavy mortar fire to attack Iraqi positions outside the villages of al-Qasar and Qabr al-Abd, said Iraqi army Col. Haider Hatem, explaining that a dust and fog storm in the Mosul area Friday gave the militants cover to attack.

"Over four hours, they launched more than 200 mortars," Hatem said. His men finally suppressed the onslaught early Saturday, he added.

The two Iraqi officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to brief the media.

The attacks are evidence of the slow pace of the Iraqi advance, which in turn is giving the extremists time to regroup after suffering battlefield setbacks, according to Iraqi officials. Still, despite the fierce attacks, the Islamic State was unable to retake any territory southeast of Mosul, Hatem said.

"They are just doing this to create another obstacle to our advances; they don't want to hold the territory," said Sgt. Maj. Muhammad Sabah, speaking at a position about 16 miles south of Mosul's airport that his unit has held for nearly two weeks.

"We are just waiting here for the order to advance," he said. "If we had it, we would already be inside Mosul."

During a visit to front-line positions, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Yarellah, the commander of a joint operations center that oversees the Mosul campaign, said the presence of civilians continues to be the biggest factor slowing advances toward Mosul. Rather than just pushing forward, his men often are forced to pause to deal with humanitarian issues, he said.

Other commanders on the ground have said the lack of sufficient numbers of troops needed to hold territory retaken from the Islamic State also has contributed to the slow progress.

"You can't just liberate land, you need to also take care of the people," Yarellah said.

During his visit Saturday, he said he also met with the U.N. officials to discuss plans to open a hospital in the recently retaken village of Hamam al-Alil.

At the front line just south of the airport, Sabah said his troops face counterattacks every time they pause.

"Almost every night they shoot at us from those same positions," he said as he pointed across a valley at a row of houses. At a nearby checkpoint, an injured Iraqi solider holding up his own IV drip could be seen being evacuated from the front.

Iraq's military does not publicize its casualty figures, but the U.N. has released casualty figures for both civilians and security forces almost every month for years since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 unleashed a deadly insurgency.

Recently, the U.N. reported that 1,959 members of Iraq's security forces were killed and another 450 were wounded in November. Moreover, 926 civilians were killed and another 930 were wounded, it said.

However, after criticism from the Iraqi government, the U.N. in Iraq acknowledged in a statement Saturday that its figures on military casualties were "largely" unverified and that it would discontinue their publication "unless sound methodology of verification can be found to better substantiate the figures being reported."

The Iraqi military's media arm called the figures "not accurate and much exaggerated."

A Section on 12/04/2016

Upcoming Events