Iraq troops vow to tighten noose around Islamic State in Mosul

Iraqi soldiers fighting just north of Mosul, within sight of city neighbourhoods, said on Sunday they were ready to tighten the noose around Islamic State (IS) militants waging a brutal defence of their Iraqi stronghold.

Four weeks into the campaign to crush IS in Mosul, the city is almost surrounded, but the militants’ defences have so far been breached only to the east, where they have battled elite troops for control of about a dozen districts.

The battle for Mosul, the biggest city held by the ultra-hardline Sunni militant group in Iraq and Syria, is the largest military operation in Iraq in a decade of turmoil unleashed by the 2003 US invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Iraq's Shia-led government, which has assembled a 100,000-strong coalition of troops, security forces, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and mainly Shia militias, backed by US air power, says it will mark the end of IS in Iraq.

But it says the fight will be a long one.

An army special forces officer on the northern front line said his men aimed to target Hadba, the first neighbourhood ahead of them within city limits. The district was visible from his position in the village of Bawiza.

Brigadier Ali Abdulla said IS militants had been pushed out of Bawiza and another village, Saada, although progress had been slowed by the presence of civilians he said were being used by the militants as human shields.

"Our approach [to Hadba] will be very slow and cautious so that we can reach the families and free them from Daesh's (IS's) grip," Abdulla said.

One man who escaped from Saada to Bawiza with his young son and daughter said they had to move from house to house and hide among sheep to avoid being caught by IS.

The timing of the decision to move on Hadba would depend on progress on other fronts, Abdulla said. Security forces are advancing to the south of Mosul, targeting the city's airport on the west bank of the Tigris River.

Abdulla said IS was using suicide car bombs, roadside bombs, snipers and long-range mortars to try to hold back the army advance in the north - all tactics it has used to lethal effect on the eastern front as well.

Another officer, Captain Oqba Nafaa, said the militants were still fighting in Saada, using a network of tunnels to carry out surprise strikes on the attacking forces.

The urban warfare tactics were similar to those they have deployed to lethal effect in the east of the city against elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) forces and an armoured division.

In some districts, control has changed hands three or four times as the militants, using tunnels and exploiting the presence of civilians as cover, have launched night-time attacks and reversed military gains of the previous day.

One resident of al-Qadisiya al-Thaniya district, which the CTS entered on Friday, said the special forces later pulled back and IS militants returned.

"They came back to us again, and this is what we feared. At night there were fierce clashes and we heard powerful explosions," she told Reuters.

A military statement later said that CTS forces had cleared all militants from two districts of eastern Mosul, Arbajiya and Karkukli, and were still clearing three others.

More than 54,000 people have been forced to flee their homes so far in the Mosul campaign.

The Norwegian Refugee Council said on Sunday tens of thousands of people "lack access to water, food, electricity and basic health services" in areas recaptured by the army in Mosul and surrounding towns and villages.

Ultimately, 700,000 people are likely to need shelter, food, water or medical support.

In the north of the country, Iraqi Kurdish fighters battling IS unlawfully destroyed Arab homes in scores of towns and villages in what may amount to a war crime, the US-based rights group Human Rights Watch said on Sunday.