Iraq: Mosul city is close to being recovered, after three years under the control of the IS


Mosul, the Iraqi city that fell to the radical Islamist group EI three years ago, is about to be reconquered by the country's joint forces fighting alongside a US-led military alliance.

"Only 3% of Mosul is still controlled by jihadists," Mohamed Ibrahim al-Bayati, head of the Nineveh Security Committee, of which Mosul is the capital, said the most populous part of the city "already Is in the hands of government forces. "

Al Bayati stressed that "Iraqi forces recovered the eastern part of Mosul in record time" but that radical fighters are still entrenched in the old city, according to EFE news agency.

The Iraqi Army and Police expelled last January the radicals of the eastern half of Mosul, while fighting on the West Bank has lasted from February to now. Al Bayati promised that in the coming days, "the end of the EI in Nineveh province" will be announced, which was occupied three years ago thanks to "a conspiracy of political leaders of the country, which allowed the army to withdraw."

The provincial representative said that the radicals conquered Mosul without the security forces opposing "any resistance" and then "killed thousands of citizens," many of them belonging to ethnic or religious minorities and Iraqi uniformed.

A commission of investigation of the Iraqi Parliament elaborated in 2015 a report in which it held responsible for the fall of Mosul to Al Maliki and Al Nuyaifi, as well as to some thirty military and political controls. Meanwhile, military analyst Amer al Bak detailed that on June 5, 2014 the jihadists launched their assault on Mosul and sowed chaos in the city: the radicals stormed the west and conquered neighborhood after neighborhood, without finding much resistance , And the inhabitants began to leave their homes.

On June 7, police began to withdraw from some western neighborhoods, while the army tried to intervene but could not access the city. On June 9, the "road was left open" for the jihadists, who finally took control of the city, the third largest in Iraq and a population of more than two million people back then. "There was negligence on the part of the Iraqi security forces," said Al Bak, as well as the authorities, who allowed "the political and military fall of the city."

The Iraqi government and army waited until October 2016 to launch the offensive to regain Mosul, after having driven the EI from other locations and areas it had conquered in northern, central and western Iraq. Since the start of the military operation, 819,000 people have been displaced in Nineveh province, according to data released yesterday by the Iraqi government, and thousands of civilians have been killed and wounded.

https://www.elciudadano.cl/derechos-h...-del-ei/06/10/