Baghdad: An Iraqi Shiite paramilitary group has said it will join government forces preparing to fight Daesh for Mosul despite objections from politicians who fear this could instigate sectarian bloodshed in the mostly Sunni Muslim city.
A much-touted government offensive to retake Iraq’s largest northern city two years after its seizure by Daesh militants has made a faltering start, casting doubt on the army’s ability to do so without more ground support.
The campaign will require the participation of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a coalition of mostly Shiite militias, said a spokesman for Asaib Ahl Al Haq, one of its most powerful factions.
“We think the battle to liberate Mosul will be huge, complex; it will be about guerrilla warfare in built-up areas, which only PMF fighters are good at ..., as forces may be fighting house to house, room to room,” the spokesman, Jawad Al Talabawi, said in an interview on Wednesday in Baghdad.
In an opinion column published in the New York Times on March 27, Iraqi Parliament Speaker Salim Al Jabouri made a plea to keep the PMF out of Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province.
Al Jabouri, the most senior Sunni official in the Shiite-led country, said the PMF had destroyed Sunni houses and mosques, carried out reprisal killings in villages recaptured from Daesh and barred people from returning to their homes.
To avoid atrocities, Al Jabouri said the Mosul campaign should replicate the recent recapture from Daesh of Ramadi, capital of mainly Sunni Anbar province, by Iraqi army troops backed by Sunni tribal fighters and US-led air strikes.
Until Ramadi’s recapture in December, it was the PMF, assisted by Iranian military advisers, that spearheaded operations to recover territory from Daesh.
The PMF says government forces will need the help of more than Sunni tribesmen to recover Mosul, which is four times the size of Ramadi.
Asaib spokesman Al Talabawi dismissed the concerns of Sunni politicians about Mosul, saying the PMF would cause less damage to the city than if government forces stormed it under the cover of air bombardment as was done in Ramadi.
He suggested the PMF rather than the army take the lead in pushing into Mosul, saying the army could advance effectively only when the ground is cleared by heavy bombardment.
Ramadi, 100km west of Baghdad, was the first major success for Iraq’s US-backed army since its collapse in the face of Daesh’s lightning surge across the country’s north and west in mid-2014.
Ramadi suffered heavy damage as Daesh militants typically use residential dwellings for cover, dig tunnels and lay mines and explosives to slow an enemy’s advance. Most of the city’s population fled before the final onslaught started.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi has declared 2016 the year of “final victory” over Daesh, which in 2014 proclaimed a caliphate from Mosul, by far the largest city under its control in both Syria and Iraq with a pre-war population of about two million.
But an offensive meant to bring the army closer to Mosul has been put on hold two weeks after its launch until more forces arrive to hold ground, the commander in charge said on Wednesday.
Forces enter Hit
Iraq’s elite counterterrorism forces say they have entered the centre of a strategically important Daesh-held western town.
Government forces reached the centre of Hit on Wednesday. The operation to retake the small Euphrates river town — launched last month — was stalled by politics, stiff Daesh resistance and tens of thousands of trapped civilians.
Iraqi troops first entered Hit on Monday under the cover of heavy air strikes. Since the operation was relaunched last week, the US-led coalition launched more than 18 strikes on the town.
Hit sits along an Daesh supply line that links territory controlled by the extremist group in Iraq and in Syria. Through the line, Daesh ferries fighters and supplies from Syria into Iraq.
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