Near Mosul, church bells ring out in a Christian town freed from terror

[Disir]

Hymn books lay scattered on the ground, the pews upturned. Graffiti scrawled on the walls.

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) may have spared Mart Shmony Syriac Orthodox Church, but exiled residents of the ancient Christian town of Bartella will find what they did to it hard to forgive.

Inhabited by Assyrians since the first century, Bartella is one of the oldest Christian towns in the world.

It was home to some 15,000 people until the summer of 2014, when they fled Isil’s lighting strike across northern Iraq.

Iraq’s elite Golden Division fought fiercely to reclaim it from the jihadists this week, and on Saturday its bells rang out over the town for the first time in two years.

....“When Isil came to our town, they said we had a choice – convert to Islam, pay them a religious tax or be executed,” she said, speaking from her home in a refugee camp in the Iraqi Kurdish capital Erbil.

“When they started taking down the crosses from the churches and burning the scriptures, we knew we weren’t safe.”

That same day, Mrs Abdel-Massih, 29, her husband and two daughters, eight and six, left on foot, walking for miles through desert land until they finally reached a checkpoint.

She, and many thousands of others from the area, have since been living in Erbil’s squalid and overcrowded Ainkawa 2 Camp.
Near Mosul, church bells ring out in a Christian town freed from terror / OrthoChristian.Com

The church didn't take as big a hit as imagined.

 

[waltky]

Iraq Special Forces Find Underground ISIS Bomb Factory...

Iraq Special Forces Find ISIS Bomb Factory, Tunnels Near Mosul
Oct 27, 2016 | Iraqi special forces east of Mosul probed a network of underground tunnels and uncovered a bomb-making facility on Thursday.

Iraqi special forces east of Mosul probed a network of underground tunnels and uncovered a bomb-making facility on Thursday in a village recently retaken from the Islamic State group as their allies battled the militants in a push toward the city from the south. Special forces commanders said the operation was proceeding as planned, but that they were waiting for forces in the south to advance further before resuming their push toward the country's second largest city, which fell to IS in 2014. "The operation has not been stopped and is proceeding as planned," special forces Brig. Gen. Haider Fadhil said.

Iraqi army Maj. Gen. Najim al-Jabori said forces south of Mosul retook the town of Staff al-Tut in the Tigris River valley the day before, and are now 20 miles (35 kilometers) from the city. He said local tribal and militia forces have been deployed to protect the gains while his troops regroup for their next push toward the city. The special forces, who are 5 1/2 miles (9 kilometers) east of the city, continued cleanup operations in the village of Tob Zawa. They found a tire shop that had been converted into a factory for making roadside bombs and attaching armor to vehicles.

Iraqi special forces hold national flags after retaking Bartella, outside Mosul, Iraq​

They also found a tunnel equipped with fans and lights that ran from beneath a mosque out to a road. Iraqi forces have found extensive tunneling networks in areas retaken from IS, which the militants used to elude U.S.-led coalition warplanes. IS has also rigged homes and other buildings with explosives to slow the troops' advance. Many fear IS may resort to more brutal tactics as the forces converge on the city, which is still home to more than a million people. The U.N.'s public health agency said Thursday it has trained 90 Iraqi medics in "mass casualty management," with a special focus on chemical attacks. The extremist group is believed to have crude chemical weapons capabilities, and Iraqi forces say they are prepared to encounter them on the battlefield.

The World Health Organization said that of the 700,000 people expected to flee Mosul, some 200,000 will require emergency health services, including more than 90,000 children needing vaccinations and 8,000 pregnant women. The International Organization for Migration says around 9,000 people have fled so far. Until now, the battles have taken place in a belt of sparsely populated farming communities around the city. The United Nations' refugee agency is shipping tents, blankets and other aid from the United Arab Emirates to northern Iraq to help those affected by the military campaign. Soliman Mohamed Daud, a senior UNHCR supply officer, told The Associated Press that 7,000 units of the relief aid will be sent to northern Iraq starting Thursday.

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UN Preparing for Possible Chemical Attack in Iraq's Mosul
Oct 27, 2016 — The U.N.'s public health agency said Thursday it has trained 90 Iraqi medics in "mass casualty management," with a special focus on chemical attacks, as part of its preparations for Iraq's operation to retake Mosul from the Islamic State group.

The extremist group, which has ruled Iraq's second largest city for more than two years, is believed to have crude chemical weapons capabilities, and Iraqi forces say they are prepared to encounter them on the battlefield. The World Health Organization said Wednesday that of the 700,000 people expected to flee Mosul, some 200,000 will require emergency health services, including more than 90,000 children needing vaccinations and 8,000 pregnant women. The operation to retake Mosul began Oct. 17 and is expected to take weeks, if not months. The fighting has not yet reached the city itself, which is home to more than a million people.

A lift truck driver uploads family tents for the Mosul refugees at the UNHCR warehouses, part of the International Humanitarian City (IHC) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates​

Iraq's special forces said Thursday they have completed their objectives east of Mosul and are waiting on other forces to advance from the south in order to further isolate the city before moving in. "The operation has not been stopped and is proceeding as planned," Brig. Gen. Haider Fadhil said. Iraqi forces have been battling IS militants around the town of Shura, some 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Mosul, in recent days. Iraqi officials have said the offensive is proceeding according to plan and that some operations are ahead of schedule.

The Mosul offensive is the largest Iraqi military operation since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and involves more than 25,000 Iraqi soldiers, Federal Police, Kurdish forces, Sunni tribal fighters and state-sanctioned Shiite militias. Fighting units are approaching the city from the north, east and south, and the U.S.-led coalition is carrying out airstrikes and providing ground support. The International Organization for Migration says around 9,000 people have fled so far, but aid groups are preparing to receive 200,000 displaced people in the coming weeks and fear many more could flee before the operation is over.

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[waltky]

Gettin' out while they can...

Mass exodus as ISIS fighters, families flee Mosul for Raqqa
November 03, 2016 – As bullets fly in Mosul, the rural roads leading west are choked with traffic – much of which is believed to be ISIS fighters fleeing to the terrorist army’s Syrian stronghold some 275 miles away in Raqqa.

On a late morning this week, FoxNews.com observed through binoculars and from atop Shengal Mountain, also known as Sinjar, hundreds of cars crawling along dusty roads linking Iraq and Syria. To Kurdish military intelligence officials, the cause of the congestion was clear. "I haven't seen anything like this. They are running away massively," a Kurdish military intelligence source told FoxNews.com, even as he spoke by phone to an ISIS informant traversing the distant road. "Ten minutes ago, the airstrikes hit a bomb factory in Bulayj," the official repeated. "ISIS fighters came to Bulayj and arrested all the tribal sheiks and accused them of spying. Families are both willingly and being forced to go to Raqqa."

The convoys are safe from coalition attack - if they may be carrying civilians or children.​

ISIS loyalists and victims alike appear to be using every means possible to flee, making the trip in pickup trucks, tractor-trailers and small vehicles. When the exodus was still a trickle earlier in the week, ISIS sought to hide the escape route by burning tires along the roadside. But as FoxNews.com watched, only the dust from dirt roads provided scant cover in the distance as the convoys chugged westward. The terror army’s escape now depends on a different sort of cover. "ISIS often has many different things they do to block vision,” another Peshmerga officer said. “But even so, we can't attack them [when they are] loading cars with kids and women. How could we attack kids? They have no part in this fight."

A dusty road on the Iraq-Syria border.​

Similarly, the U.S.-led coalition won't unleash airpower with civilians in harm’s way, giving ISIS -- and likely its leadership -- free passage to its Syrian base. "ISIS is moving more and more of its families to Raqqa, they are kicking civilians out of their homes and occupying them," one source connected to Iraqi Forces intelligence explained. "Then, only the men return to Mosul to keep fighting." According to multiple insiders familiar with the Mosul-to-Raqqa route and ISIS tactics, the group takes abandoned roads and moves through friendly, Sunni-populated villages that provide not only cover, but potential safe haven.

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Heavy Fighting in Mosul as IS Hits Tank During Iraqi Assault
NOV. 4, 2016 — Heavy fighting erupted in the eastern neighborhoods of Mosul on Friday as Iraqi special forces launched an assault deeper into the urban areas of the city and Islamic State militants fired back, striking and disabling an Abrams tank with a rocket.

IS hit the tank with a rocket fired from a nearby building, sending its crew fleeing from the smoking vehicle, seemingly unharmed. The fighting has been the most intense urban combat in Mosul since the Iraqi offensive began over two weeks ago to drive IS from the city, Iraq's second-largest. The early morning advance began with artillery and mortar strikes on the Aden, Tahrir, and Quds districts, just west of special forces' footholds in the Gogjali and Karama neighborhoods, Lt. Col. Muhanad al-Timimi told The Associated Press. Both sides opened up with small arms and mortar fire after an artillery barrage by the special forces, ahead of their advance. A bulldozer and another car later emerged from IS-held territory, presumably packed with explosives and preparing for suicide attacks.

The Islamic State group is fighting to hold Mosul as Iraqi forces and allied Kurdish troops squeeze in from all directions with U.S.-led coalition support, mostly from airstrikes and reconnaissance. On Tuesday, Iraqi troops entered the city limits for the first time in more than two years — soldiers had withdrawn from Mosul in the face of IS militants' 2014 blitz that seized large swaths of territory in Iraq and neighboring Syria. Now the Iraqi forces are gearing up for urban warfare expected to take weeks, if not months, as they work their way neighborhood by neighborhood, going through a warren of dense buildings prone to booby traps and ambushes.

More than 1 million civilians are stuck in the city, complicating the military's efforts to advance without harming innocents. IS militants have driven thousands of them deeper into the city's built-up areas, presumably for use as human shields, while hundreds of others have fled in the past days toward government-controlled territory despite the uncertainty of resettlement in displacement camps. Mosul is the last major IS stronghold in Iraq, and expelling the militant group from it would be a major blow to the survival of its self-declared "caliphate" that stretches into Syria. When IS seized Mosul and other territory in 2014, the much larger Iraqi military had been neglected and demoralized by corruption.

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