Aid workers ‘brace for worst’ as Mosul battle intensifies

GOGJALI, Iraq — More than a million civilians in Mosul were in grave danger and aid workers were “bracing for the worst”, a relief group said on Wednesday, after Iraqi forces reached the extremist-held city.

Gunfire echoed across the village of Gogjali on the edge of Mosul on Wednesday, as elite Iraqi forces nearby continued a push that had brought them to within a few hundred metres of the city’s eastern edge.

Just over two weeks into the offensive to retake Mosul — the last Iraqi city under the control of the Daesh terror group — Iraq’s military said on Tuesday its forces had penetrated city limits by entering a southeastern neighbourhood.

There were no signs yet of a major push inside Mosul itself and on other fronts Iraqi forces were still some distance from the city.

But the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), one of the most active relief groups operating in Iraq, warned that a long-feared humanitarian crisis was closer than ever.

“We are now bracing ourselves for the worst. The lives of 1.2 million civilians are in grave danger, and the future of all of Iraq is now in the balance,” NRC Iraq director, Wolfgang Gressmann, said in a statement.

‘Terrifying nightmare’ 

“People in and around Mosul have lived for almost two and a half years in a relentless, terrifying nightmare. We are now all responsible to put an end to it,” Gressmann said.

More than 20,000 people have already fled to government-held areas since the offensive was launched on October 17, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

But civilians inside Mosul — who according to aid group Save The Children include up to 600,000 children — are trapped behind Daesh lines and the United Nations has said thousands are being held for possible use as human shields.

In Gogjali, fighters with Iraq’s elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) were screening civilians for any remaining members of Daesh.

One government fighter carried a black Daesh flag, saying: “We removed it and planted the Iraqi flag instead.”

Backed by air and ground support from a US-led coalition, Iraqi federal forces and Kurdish peshmerga fighters are advancing on Mosul from the east, north and south.

Soldiers pushing down from the north have moved within two kilometres of Mosul, military officials say, while forces moving from the south are still some distance from the city.

Paramilitary forces from the Hashed Al Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation Unit), an umbrella organisation dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militia, also launched an assault at the weekend to cut off the extremists’ escape route to Syria to the west of Mosul.

Daesh is vastly outnumbered in the battle, with an estimated 4,000 to 7,000 extremist fighters in Mosul and the surrounding area.