Thousands flee amid fight over western Mosul

Mosul residents said they had not been able to travel on the highway that starts at the Syria Gate since Tuesday.

Iraqi forces have yet to advance deep into western areas, but the fighting combined with privation and harsh ISIL rule has already pushed a growing number of civilians to flee.

Displaced Iraqi people flee their homes, during the battle against Islamic State militants, at the district of al-Mamoun in Mosul, Iraq, March 1, 2017.

“The enemy can not sustain the attrition that they are suffering and therefore they lose terrain, they lose battles”.

The top United States defense official also said he’d be open to any requests his commanders might have as they advise and support local forces fighting to retake the city of Mosul from Daesh and move on to its stronghold in Raqqa, Syria.

“The inevitability of their destruction just becomes really a matter of time”, he said, adding that the group’s leadership was now focussed on little more than survival.

Experts have said the slight to Iraq threatened to undermine the fight against ISIS. “They recognise that what you are actually signing yourself up to is going to live under a brutal regime”.

The top USA commander in Iraq on Wednesday (March 1) downplayed the chances that the United States would deploy a large number of additional coalition forces to battle the Islamic State, even as President Donald Trump weighs options to speed the campaign.

Speaking to Pentagon reporters via teleconference from Baghdad, Army Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend said Iraqi forces attacked the city’s west side northward along the Tigris River, where they captured high ground, enabling them to move quickly to the airport.

Jaudat said government artillery was targeting remaining “terrorist dens” in the western half of the city. It has been reported that ISIS militants have been cut off from each other and they are fighting in isolated groups.

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has acknowledged defeat in Iraq and ordered his militants to either flee or blast themselves in suicide attacks, the media reports saying.

The retaking of Mosul from ISIS began in October when Iraqi troops and militia of minority religious and ethnic groups, which have had conflicts in Iraq’s history, aligned to retake the city, according to CNN.

Troops from the army’s rapid reaction force found the tunnel during its operation to retake the west of Mosul, the jihadists’ last major stronghold in the country.