An Iraqi Army helicopter fires a missile at ISIS positions as government forces seeking to retake Mosul said they had cut the last road out of the city, trapping hundreds of jihadists inside.
The Baghdad regime recaptured east Mosul earlier this year and are now battling to retake the western side of the Euphrates river from ISIS, which seized the country’s second city along with swathes of other territory in 2014.
The Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS, Brett McGurk, said: ‘ISIS is trapped. Just last night, the 9th Iraqi army division, up near Badush, just northwest of Mosul, cut off the last road out of Mosul.’
‘Any of the fighters who are left in Mosul, they’re going to die there, because they’re trapped. So we are very committed to not just defeating them in Mosul, but making sure these guys cannot escape,’ said Mr McGurk, who was appointed by President Obama but has been retained by President Trump.
Iraqi soldiers and pro-government paramilitaries are fighting ISIS west of Mosul, while two special forces units and the federal police battle the jihadists inside it.
ISIS fighters may still be able to sneak in and out of the city in small numbers, but the lack of access to roads makes larger-scale movement and resupply more difficult, if not impossible.
Mr McGurk said ISIS had lost ‘over 60 percent of the territory it once held’ in Iraq and was ‘losing more every day’.
He said 180 ISIS leaders had been killed and said: ‘We now believe that we are killing so many of their fighters that they are not able to replace them. That was not the case even a year ago.’
In addition to carrying out strikes targeting ISIS, the US-led coalition has trained nearly 90,000 members of the Iraqi security forces, the US envoy said.
Washington had spent billions of dollars training and equipping Iraqi forces prior to its military withdrawal in 2011, but that effort did not translate into long-term competence, with Baghdad’s forces performing dismally in the early days of the 2014 ISIS offensive.
Iraqi forces have since made a major turnaround, dealing IS a string of defeats and launching a massive operation in October to recapture Mosul.
While the noose is tightening around the jihadists still in Mosul, the city’s recapture would not spell the end of ISIS.
It still holds areas in western Iraq as well as across the border in Syria, including Raqqa.
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, an umbrella group for Kurdish and Arab fighters, are closing in on Raqqa.
Mr McGurk said they were only six miles from the city.
He said of ISIS: ‘Raqqa remains their administrative capital, it’s where we think a lot of their leaders are located, it’s where we think they are planning a lot of attacks around the world.’
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