IS fighters have been instructed to wreak as much destruction as they can, if they’re unable to hold the city against Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga militiamen, according to Saeed Mamuzini, an official with the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Iraqi Kurdistan’s ruling party. In an interview in Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, with Rudaw television, Mamuzini said the terror group has been preparing for the long-anticipated offensive on Mosul, which could start possibly this month. Mosul is the last major stronghold of the terror group in the country. “IS is prepared to fight and they have new tactics of war. For example, they have built tunnels inside Mosul,” he said.
Smoke rises in the aftermath of clashes with Islamic State militants on the southeast of Mosul, Iraq
The jihadist defenders are also thought to have “planted improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in most places” and are organizing suicide bombers. “But the new strategy that was sent from [IS leader] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is: If you can defend Mosul, do it, and if you can’t then escape, but leave devastation and mass killings behind,” the Kurdish official added. Top IS leaders are leaving the city, he says, and the group has been transporting out archeological pieces, money and other valuables. European and Middle Eastern fighters have also left, according to Iraqi and Kurdish officials, leaving the defense of the city to a mixture of locals, Turkmen and Chechens.
A Peshmerga fighter on the frontline, east of Mosul, Iraq
Iraqi officials estimate IS has about 5,000 fighters in the city. And they have been busy preparing defenses, including digging an elaborate network of tunnels and a moat filled with oil ready to be set ablaze. The smoke will make it harder for coalition pilots to mount close-support airstrikes to help advancing Iraqi troops. To the south of Mosul, where Iraqi forces have been making slow progress in retaking villages, the militants have already set fire to oilfields; plumes of dark smoke add to a blighted landscape full of destroyed dwellings, some demolished by airstrikes and artillery shelling, others by mortar and rocket fire.
Worsening conditions for Mosul residents
“Daily, people are detained and killed in Mosul by IS. People are in a very bad situation,” says Mamuzini. Food and medicines are in shorty supply and Kurdish officials claim IS has executed in the past month more than 200 young men for refusing to join IS. The trickle of people, mainly women, escaping the city, confirm IS militants are forcing young men to join their ranks on pain of death. One woman, who fled into Kurdish peshmerga-controlled territory to the east of Mosul, told a VOA translator that her brother had been executed by the terror group but “two cousins had joined” the jihadists. “They didn’t want to but they wanted to live,” she explained tearfully. Iraqi officials have vowed to recapture Mosul by year’s end but there have been delays in a push on the city that IS captured more than two years ago.
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