mosul almost all liberated

[crazyladybutterfly]

mosul.png

[crazyladybutterfly]

The Iraqi army is advancing rapidly in Western Mosul, controlling at least 50 to 60 per cent of Western Mosul. On Tuesday, the Joint Operations Command announced the liberation of Dandan and Dawasa, which includes an important administrative ISIS headquarters.

“Iraqi forces advancing in west Mosul and announce liberation of governance complex. This was the administrative HQ for ISIS terrorists,” Brett McGurk, the US envoy for the anti-ISIS coalition said.

The governance complex was used as an administrative headquarters and a Sharia court by Islamic State’s (ISIS) militants.

Analysts expect that the operation could be finished in a month or more, although some said it could also last until the summer.

“I think we’re looking into a month, maybe more maybe less,” Rasha Al Aqeedi, an Iraqi Research Fellow at Al Mesbar Studies and Research Center told ARA News.

http://aranews.net/2017/03/iraqis-ca...surprise-raid/

[crazyladybutterfly]

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[crazyladybutterfly]

https://twitter.com/masoud_barzani/s...76981484810240

barzani met with iraqi prime minister to talk about the liberation of mosul

[crazyladybutterfly]

http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Isl...medium=twitter

It is impossible to confirm the whereabouts of the Islamic State "caliph," who declared himself the ruler of all Muslims from Mosul's Great Mosque after his forces swept through northern Iraq in 2014.
But US and Iraqi intelligence sources say an absence of official communication from the group's leadership and the loss of territory in Mosul suggest he has abandoned the city, by far the largest population center his group has ever held.


From their efforts to track him, they believe he hides mostly among sympathetic civilians in familiar desert villages, rather than with fighters in their barracks in urban areas where combat has been under way, the sources say.

The 100,000-strong Iraqi force fully captured the eastern half of Mosul in January, and commanders began an operation to cross the Tigris and take the western half last month. Progress has since been steady and the coalition says its victory is now inevitable, which would dismantle the caliphate in Iraq.

The intelligence sources point to a sharp drop in Islamic State postings on social media as evidence that Baghdadi and his circle have become increasingly isolated.

Baghdadi himself has not released a recorded speech since early November, two weeks after the start of the Mosul battle, when he called on his followers to fight the "unbelievers" and "make their blood flow as rivers."

Since then, sporadic Islamic State statements mention attacks carried out by suicide bombers at various locations in Iraq and Syria, but place no particular emphasis on Mosul, despite the city being the main center of fighting.

The group's presence on Telegram, a social media network that had become its main platform for announcements and speeches, has tapered off. The coalition estimates that Islamic State activity on Twitter has fallen by 45 percent since 2014, with 360,000 of the group's Twitter accounts suspended so far and new ones usually shut down within two days.

More than half of the 6,000 jihadists left to defend the city have been killed, according to Hisham al-Hashimi, the author of the book "World of Daesh," who also advises the Iraqi government.

US commanders sound upbeat and say the battle for the city is now in a late stage.

[crazyladybutterfly]

The "caliphate" as a state structure would end with the capture of Raqqa, its de facto capital in Syria, possibly later this year.

Raqqa is far smaller than Mosul, but mounting operations against Islamic State in Syria has been trickier than in Iraq, because the group's many Syrian enemies have mostly been pre-occupied fighting among themselves in a civil war since 2011.


"The inevitability of their destruction just becomes really a matter of time," said Major General Rupert Jones, deputy commander for the US-led anti-Islamic State coalition, adding that the group's leadership was now focused on little more than survival.


The last official report about Baghdadi was from the Iraqi military on Feb. 13. Iraqi F-16s carried out a strike on a house where he was thought to be meeting other commanders, in western Iraq, near the Syrian border, it said.

Baghdadi, an Iraqi whose real name is Ibrahim al-Samarrai, is moving in a remote, mostly-desert stretch populated exclusively by Sunni Arab tribes north of the Euphrates river, according to Hashimi.


http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Isl...medium=twitter

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https://twitter.com/IraqiSecurity/st...09415925538816
The "mother of all battles" in #Mosul is nearly here. #Iraq's armed forces are just a few hundred metres from "old #Mosul".

[Al-Meksiki]

IS has basically lost all of their major city gains. Soon they'll have nothing more than sand

[crazyladybutterfly]

IS has basically lost all of their major city gains. Soon they'll have nothing more than sand

yes and they continue to tell is that they will conquer rome