Iraqi forces stormed the last neighbourhood in eastern Mosul still under the control of the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL) and have so far liberated a part of it, the Ninawa Operations Command said Tuesday (January 24th).

Federal forces moved into al-Rashidiya, an area on the northern edge and east bank of Mosul, on Monday.

"Our forces are currently engaged in violent battles in al-Rashidiya, ISIL's last stronghold close to the Tigris River," Ninawa operation commander Lt. Gen. Abdul Ameer Rashid Yarallah told Diyaruna.

"We will announce the official liberation of the eastern side of Mosul within hours," he said.

On Monday, ISIL expelled civilians from their homes along the Tigris on Mosul's west bank, apparently bracing for a cross-river attack by Iraqi forces, AFP reported.

"The group forced us to leave our homes... without allowing us to take our belongings," a resident of al-Maidan, a neighbourhood on the city's west bank, said.

"It deployed gun positions and posted snipers on roofs and at windows," the resident said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal by the ISIL gunmen ruling his neighbourhood.

"We were forced to leave the area because it will become a battlefield and so we moved in with relatives in other parts of the city," he said.

Three quarters of a million civilians living in west Mosul are at "extreme risk", the UN warned Tuesday.

"We hope that everything is done to protect the hundreds of thousands of people who are across the river in the west," UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq, Lise Grande, said in a statement.

"We know that they are at extreme risk and we fear for their lives," she said.