Losing grip in Iraq, ISIL deploys human shields and suicide bombs

ERBIL // Desperate to slow the advance of Iraqi troops towards Mosul, ISIL on Wednesday deployed suicide bombers and fired mortar shells a day after the Pentagon warned that trapped civilians were being used as human shields.

Iraqi forces were moving closer to retaking Qaraqosh, the country’s largest Christian town, on the third day of the offensive as Iraq’s powerful Shiite militia declared their intent to take part in the campaign. Up to 6,000 ISIL militants may still be holed up in Mosul, said the head of Iraq’s special forces, Lt Gen Talib Shaghati.

Meanwhile, the US military said ISIL leaders have been fleeing the northern city. US army Maj Gen Gary Volesky declined to say how many leaders had left, but said they were being attacked in air strikes as they fled.

After reaching the town’s outskirts a day earlier, the Iraqi army’s 9th armoured division was on Wednesday within a kilometre from Qaraqosh, also known as Hamdaniyah, whose population of around 50,000 had fled when ISIL took over the ancient Christian dwelling in August 2014.

News that the militants were losing their grip on the town sparked scenes of wild jubilation in Ainkawa, a Christian district of the Iraqi Kurdish capital Erbil, and hundreds of people took to the streets to celebrate and hold prayers. Many of Qaraqosh’s displaced residents ended up in camps in Ainkawa, where they have been pining to return to their homes.

"There is a lot of emotion," Karam, a Qaraqosh resident who fled to Erbil with his family in 2014, told The National. He likened his time in exile to "a man who is in prison and is waiting to be released into freedom".

Situated about 20 kilometres from the edge of Mosul, Qaraqosh is one of the few larger urban areas standing in the way of reaching Mosul. Its recapture from ISIL will likely open up a new front to the north of the city, where Kurdish peshmerga and Iraqi army units have been massing along the ridge straddling Mosul’s northern approaches.

With the Iraqi army continuing its advance on Mosul from the south on the other side of the Tigris, the insurgents will be pushed back from three sides: north, south and east.

ISIL still holds a corridor of territory to the west of the city, and the army has admitted that it might keep open an escape route into Syria in a bid to tempt the insurgents to abandon their defence of Mosul.

Russia on Wednesday warned the US-led coalition against pushing the extremists from Iraq to Syria, with its chief of general staff Valery Gerasimov saying, “It is necessary not to drive terrorists from one country to the other but to destroy them on the spot.”

The plan to leave an open corridor may now change, however, after Iraq’s Shiite militias on Wednesday declared they will participate in the Mosul operation by supporting an Iraqi push towards the ISIL-held town of Tal Afar, west of Mosul. Taking Tal Afar would effectively cut off the extremists’ escape route to Syria.

The Shiite militias, also known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) or the Hashed Al Shaabi, are powerful armed groups that have proven effective in the war against ISIL, but they also stand accused of the widespread killing and torture of Sunni civilians.

“The PMF will be backing the security forces on the western front ... along two axes. The first is Tal Afar and the second is to support the forces going into the centre of Mosul,” according to the official Hashed Al Shaabi website.

The militias will only act as a back up to the regular army, and take part in the fighting inside Mosul if needed, Haitham Al Mayahi, a spokesman for the Badr Organisation, one of the biggest PMF groups, told The National on Tuesday.

If the militias were to enter Mosul, they would likely spark widespread panic among the city’s Sunni residents who are terrified of the Shiite fighters, and complicate efforts to minimise civilian casualties, which centre around keeping inhabitants in their houses.

Aid agencies are woefully underprepared to deal with the expected mass exodus of civilians from Mosul, and escaping the heavily mined and contested city will be extremely dangerous for those trying to flee.

Should the PMF position themselves on the outskirts of the city once the fighting gets under way in Mosul, fleeing civilians run the risk of sectarian reprisals by the militia as they did during the battle for Fallujah earlier this year. Sectarian reprisals are even more likely if the PMF enter Tal Afar, a town where ISIL enjoys strong grass roots support among its Sunni Turkmen population. “Tal Afar is seen as one of the most central hubs of ISIS support and activity, what some might term the badlands,” said Michael Stephens, the head of the Royal United Services Institute in Qatar.

A move by the Shiite militias on Tal Afar could be an attempt to prevent Turkey from using the town’s Sunni Turkmen to spread its influence in northern Iraq. The PMF are engaged in an escalating rivalry with Turkey, which maintains a military base close to Mosul and has refused to pull its troops out of Iraq.

The Shiite militias, some of which fight alongside the Assad regime in Syria, might also want to gain an access route to the country.

With the weak Iraqi government only wielding limited control over the Shiite militias, allowing them involvement in Tal Afar could be an exercise in damage limitation, said Mr Stephens.

“Perhaps this could be a trade-off for them not operating inside Mosul, and they can assume the spoils of war while not creating further problems inside Mosul itself.”

foreign.desk@thenational.ae

* with additional reporting from Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse