Mosul- Iraq’s Federal Police announced on Thursday destroying an ISIS stronghold based in central Mosul, while the terror organization tightened its siege over civilians trapped in the areas under its control.
ISIS has a long history of using civilians as human shields to slow the advance of Iraqi forces against their territory.
“Our forces completely destroyed the command and control headquarters of ISIS terrorists in Mosul’s Old City,” said police chief Major-General Raed Shaker Jawdat.
For the qualitative operation, Iraqi forces used logistics detail by reconnaissance jets surveying the Old City ever since the launch of military operations to liberate it from ISIS hold in February 19, said Maj. Gen. Jawdat.
He added that an Iraqi army military unit, backed by an armored platoon, was able to enter the heart of the Old City, killing 13 ISIS ultra-hardline militants and destroying seven bomb-laden vehicles.
Iraqi air forces intensified its raids on ISIS bastions in western Mosul, especially the district of Ba’aj bordering Syria, one of ISIS’ key strongholds in Iraq’s Nineveh governorate. State military broadcasts confirmed that the strikes were “carried out on the basis of accurate intelligence information, and killed dozens of ISIS militants.”
The broadcast also said that army units have successfully destroyed an ISIS weapon warehouse in an operation that also took down 18 terrorist militants in the town of Ihlila in Badush, a village in northern Iraq within the Nineveh Governorate, located northwest of Mosul.
Arial strikes also wreaked havoc over an ISIS strategic location where over 35 militants held posts, guarding what was believed to be two major arms warehouses and a bomb-manufacture lab. The bastion, now destroyed, was guarded by ISIS’ Salah al-Din battalion.
“Humanitarian conditions in areas under ISIS control are very bad,” Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) official in Mosul, Saeed Mumuzini told Asharq Al-Awsat.
“Famine is killing civilians and there is a severe shortage of drinking water.”
ISIS has laid siege to civilian neighborhoods and prevented their escape in a plan to later use them as human shields.
ISIS kills anyone who attempts to escape or disobey its self-styled rule, Mumuzini said.