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Mosul Op: Fighting in Hammam Al-Alil

November 2, 2016 at 1:17 pm

Iraqi military officials have stated that they are engaged in fierce clashes with Daesh in the Hammam Al-Alil area, ten kilometres from the southern outskirts of the city of Mosul.

Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) began their assault on Hammam Al-Alil, one of the last of Mosul’s satellite towns in the southern axis, earlier today with the objective of clearing Daesh fighters out of the settlement and opening the way for the ISF to reach Mosul’s administrative borders.

Al Jazeera reported General Raed Shakir of Iraq’s federal police as saying that his men and other ISF units aim to capture Hammam Al-Alil in “preparation for the operation to recapture [Mosul].”

Meanwhile to Mosul’s east, the ISF Counter Terrorism Service claimed to have managed to gain control of most of the industrial satellite town of Gogjali, opening the way for Iraqi forces to begin the process of entering Mosul itself.

Daesh’s Amaq news agency released footage it claimed showed its fighters engaging the ISF, and say that they are forcing Iraqi troops to withdraw from areas they had taken in Gogjali.

Although widely reported as being part of Mosul, Gogjali is in fact just outside the city limits. Earlier reports confirmed that a television station controlled by Daesh was captured by the ISF who declared that they were in Mosul, yet this has been disputed.

Local civilian sources confirmed to MEMO that the ISF has yet to breach the city’s eastern limits, and clashes are continuing unabated on all three main axes of advance in the north, east and south.

The Shia-dominated Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) are attacking Tel Afar 60 kilometres to the west, but have so far failed to make any noteworthy gains.