Iraq forces battle Daesh inside Mosul university

Iraqi special forces battled Daesh militants inside the Mosul University campus today in the second day of fierce clashes in the complex and also claimed to have discovered chemicals used to try to make weapons, officers said.

“There are still clashes. We entered the university and cleared the technical institute, dentistry and antiquities departments,” Lieutenant General Abdelwahab Al-Saadi of the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) told a Reuters reporter in the complex.

“In the coming hours it will be liberated completely,” he claimed, despite fighting being ongoing for two days.

CTS troops had gathered in the university canteen. As they unfurled a map of the area, a suspected Daesh drone flew overhead and they shot at it. Daesh has made frequent use of drones for surveillance and also as airborne improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

The Iraqi forces also claimed to have found chemical substances Daesh had used to try to make weapons, CTS commander Sami Al-Aridhi said.

The United Nations says the militants seized radioactive materials used for scientific research from the university when they overran Mosul and vast areas of northern Iraq and eastern Syria in 2014.

However, even former dictator Saddam Hussein was unable to develop chemical, biological, radioactive or nuclear weapons using only Iraq’s meagre capabilities, least of all by exploiting low-tech university laboratories.

Daesh militants have used chemical agents including mustard gas in a number of attacks in Iraq and Syria, US officials, rights groups and residents have said.

Recapturing the university would be a gain for the Iraqi government as it would allow Iraqi forces to advance quicker towards the Tigris River, from where they will be able to launch attacks on the city’s west, still all under Daesh control, military officers say.

Military analysts have said, however, that reaching the Tigris would in itself pose new challenges, as the river which bisects the city would have to be crossed. This would be difficult as the US-led coalition had destroyed all the bridges connecting the east and west banks.

Any bridging attempts would expose Iraqi military units, already heavily depleted after nearly three full months of fighting, to Daesh mortar and sniper fire from the west bank, more heavily fortified and manned that the east bank that is still not under government control.

The Iraqi government launched a US and Iran-backed offensive on 17 October 2016 in an attempt to push Daesh out of Mosul, Iraq’s second city, that has been held by the militants since June 2014 after the Iraqi military was forced to flee.