Forces fighting Daesh set to storm airport, clear way to western Mosul

Iraqi security forces drive in the village of Albu Saif, south of Mosul, after they recaptured the village from the control of the Islamic State (IS) group on Tuesday, during the ongoing military offensive to retake the western side of Mosul. (AFP)

SOUTH OF MOSUL: US-backed Iraqi forces closing in on the Daesh-held western half of Mosul prepared on Tuesday to storm the airport and a nearby military base on its southern outskirts to create a bridgehead for a thrust into the city.
Since ousting Daesh from eastern Mosul last month, Iraqi forces have advanced in sparsely populated outlying areas but fighting will intensify as they near the teeming inner city of western Mosul and the risk to roughly 750,000 civilians there will rise.
The US military commander in Iraq has said he believes US-backed forces will retake both of Daesh’s urban bastions — Mosul and Raqqa in neighboring Syria — within the next six months, which would end the militants’ ambitions to territorial rule three years after they declared a “caliphate.”
Iraqi federal police and elite Interior Ministry units known as Rapid Response have made rapid progress toward western Mosul in a sweep upwards through stony desert terrain from the south since launching the offensive’s second phase on Sunday.
After fighting their way with helicopter gunships, machine gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades to Albu Saif on Monday, Iraqi forces were building up their positions in the hilltop village that overlooks the airport and built-up western Mosul beyond, a Reuters correspondent reported from the area.
The corpse of an Daesh insurgent with a missing leg lay in the street of Albu Saif village.
Iraqi forces reached the “vicinity” of Mosul’s international airport on Monday, the military said. A Rapid Response spokesman said the airport, once retaken, would be a close-support base for the onslaught into the west of Iraq’s second largest city.
Iraqi forces will also need to secure the Gozhlani military complex, which includes barracks and training grounds and sprawls across the area between the airport and the end of the Baghdad-Mosul highway.
A senior Iraqi official said the airport and Gozhlani base had been heavily damaged by US-led air strikes to wear down Daesh militants ahead of the offensive. He said Iraqi forces did not anticipate much resistance at the airport or base especially as the area was exposed to airstrikes and artillery bombardment.
“The next step, God willing, is to advance to the Ghozlani military base,” said Rapid Response Capt. Mohammed Ali Mohsen, speaking inside a house where the Daesh slogan, ‘Daesh is Staying,’ was scrawled in marker pen on the walls.