Iraq News

Iraqi forces moving 'faster than expected' on Mosul: Iraq PM

Iraqi forces are "advancing faster than expected" in a major offensive to recapture Mosul from "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL) elements, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abbadi said Thursday (October 20th), AFP reported.

"We are advancing faster than we had expected and planned," al-Abbadi said, speaking on a video conference link to an international meeting co-hosted by France and Iraq on the future of Mosul following the start of the offensive this week.

In Thursday's battles, the fourth day of the Ninawa liberation operations, Iraqi forces liberated parts of the town of Bashiqa, and the villages of Rawan, Sidawa, al-Makuk, al-Khabata, al-Manawir, al-Salahiya, al-Khalidiya and Khonaysat on the outskirts of Mosul, the Ministry of Defence said.

"Our forces have achieved another success by targeting ISIL concentrations and killing dozens of the group's elements in the northern front of Khazer," ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasul told Diyaruna.

"We are now working on maintaining the same pace of progress of our forces and exploiting ISIL's collapse," he said.

A US general said Wednesday that ISIL leaders have been fleeing Mosul, AFP reported

Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky, who heads the land component command of the coalition to defeat ISIL, predicted that foreign fighters will end up forming a large contingent of jihadists remaining in the city, as they have nowhere else to go.

"We are telling ISIL that their leaders are abandoning them. We have seen a movement out of Mosul," he told reporters in a video briefing from Baghdad.

He noted that the Iraqis would screen anyone leaving Mosul, and attempts by foreign fighters to blend in to an expected exodus of displaced people would be thwarted.

"It is difficult for them to blend into the local population based on the number of different types of foreign fighters that there are," Volesky said.

"We expect that they will be the ones (who stay and fight), because they really do not have any other place to go," he added.

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