Mosul Op: US, Daesh claim hundreds of fatalities

A US general has claimed that up to 900 Daesh fighters have been killed by Iraqi forces backed by the US-led coalition, AFP reported today.

CENTCOM chief General Joseph Votel told AFP: “Just in the operations over the last week and a half associated with Mosul, we estimate [Iraqi Security Forces] probably killed about 800-900 [Daesh] fighters.”

Previously, the United States said that it “does not use a casualty count as a measure of effectiveness in the campaign to ultimately defeat [Daesh] in Iraq and Syria.”

That statement would seem to agree with the facts on the ground. Early estimates placed Daesh manpower levels at around 6,000 men. However, later estimates revised this number down to about 4,000 fighters in the vicinity of Mosul.

As such, and if accurate, Votel’s estimates would suggest that ISF and allied Kurdish and Shia militias have killed possibly a quarter of Daesh forces in and around the Mosul area.

However, this would seem to be at odds with the pace of the ISF advance. The operation to retake Mosul has been ongoing for the past ten days, yet they have still not reached the outskirts of Iraq’s second city, let alone entered it, now Daesh’s last major urban stronghold in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Daesh released an infographic a week after operations began, and three days before the US general revealed his casualty estimates.

Daesh claimed to have killed almost 820 ISF and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, as well as destroyed several tanks, including US-made but Iraqi-operated M1 Abrams main battle tanks. They even released a video of an attack on an M1 Abrams to prove their assertions.

Barzani stresses Peshmerga will not enter Mosul

Meanwhile, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Masoud Barzani reiterated today that the Peshmerga will not be entering the city of Mosul itself.

During a joint press conference with Shia leader Ammar Al-Hakim, Barzani confirmed that the elite Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service will be the ones to enter the city, with the Peshmerga assisting by surrounding sectors of the city under its operational control, mainly to the east.

Barzani also added that there was no set timetable for breaching Daesh’s defences to enter Mosul proper, explaining that Daesh’s assault on Kirkuk last week was the militant group’s attempt at diverting attention from their “failures” in Mosul.