Iraq preparing to advance on Mosul Airport

Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) are preparing to advance towards Mosul Airport on the city’s southern edge to increase pressure on Daesh militants who have managed to repel all attempts by the ISF to breach their eastern defences so far, officers said today.

The rapid response forces, part of a coalition seeking to crush Daesh in the largest city under their control in Iraq or Syria, took the town of Hammam Al-Alil, just over 15 kilometres south of Mosul on Monday.

Officers say they plan to resume their advance northward, up the western bank of the Tigris River towards the city of 1.5 million people who have lived under the hardline organisation for more than two years.

More than three weeks after the US-backed campaign to retake Mosul was launched, the city is almost surrounded by the coalition of nearly 100,000 fighters. But troops have entered only a handful of neighbourhoods in the east of the city before being hurled out again by Daesh defenders.

“We need to put wider pressure on the enemy in different areas,” said Major-General Thamer Al-Husseini, commander of a police SWAT unit which is run by the Shia-controlled Interior Ministry and staffed by fighters from the Iran-backed Badr Organisation.

He said operations would resume within two days.

Lieutenant-Colonel Dhiya Mizhir said the target was an area overlooking Mosul Airport, which has been rendered unusable by Daesh to prevent US and Iran-backed Iraqi attackers using it as a staging post for their offensive.

Army officers told Reuters in September the militants had moved concrete blast walls onto the runway to prevent planes from landing there.

Satellite pictures released by intelligence firm Stratfor also showed they had dug deep trenches in the runways and destroyed buildings to ensure clear lines of sight for defenders and to prevent advancing forces from using hangars or other facilities.

Previously, analysts had reported that it would be foolhardy for the ISF to push into eastern Mosul whilst other axes of approach had been bogged down. This is due to the risk of ISF units being ambushed as they enter Mosul without support.

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The operation to recapture Mosul from Daesh militants has been ongoing since 17 October, and is now nearing a month since it was launched. The ISF has so far failed to achieve its own target of entering and holding districts in the city within three weeks.