Iraqi forces have won a string of swift territorial gains in Mosul in the fight against the Islamic State group after months of slow progress. Government troops retook the eastern edge of a third bridge in Mosul today and a cluster of buildings inside Mosul university, according to a senior Iraqi officer overseeing the operation.
IS fighters overran Mosul in the summer of 2014, announcing from there their self-styled "caliphate" after taking a large swath of Iraq and Syria in a lightning surge. Access to the city's central bank, a large taxable civilian population and nearby oilfields quickly made IS the world's wealthiest terrorist group.
Yet even as a punishing campaign of US-led coalition airstrikes has pushed the militants underground, IS leaders continued to use Mosul as a key logistical hub for planning meetings. If recaptured by the Iraqi forces, IS territory in Iraq that once stretched across a third of the country would be reduced to small pockets in the north and west that troops will likely be able to mop up relatively quickly.
Iraqi forces now control the eastern sides of three of the city's five bridges that span the Tigris river connecting Mosul's east to west. Warplanes from the US-led coalition bombed the city's bridges late last year in an effort to isolate IS fighters in the city's east by disrupting resupply routes.
At Mosul University, senior commanders said that Iraqi forces have secured more than half of the campus today amid stiff resistance, but clashes were ongoing into the afternoon. Iraqi forces entered the university from the southeast yesterday morning and by nightfall had secured a handful of buildings, Brig. Gen. Haider Fadhil and Lt Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi said on a tour of the university today.
"We watched all the IS fighters gather in that building, so we blew it up," said special forces Sgt Maj. Haytham Ghani pointing to one of the blackened technical college buildings where charred desks could be seen inside. "You can still see some of their corpses," he added.
Thick clouds of black smoke rose from the middle of the sprawling complex this morning. By afternoon, clashes had intensified with volleys of sniper and mortar fire targeting the advancing Iraqi forces. Convoys of Iraqi Humvees snaked through the campus, pausing for artillery and airstrikes to clear snipers perched within classrooms, dormitories and behind the trees that line the campus streets.
As Iraqi forces have closed in on the Tigris river that roughly divides Mosul into eastern and western halves, their pace has quickened. IS defenses in the city's east appear to be thinning and unlike in the surrounding neighbourhoods, Iraqi officers said they believe Mosul University and recently retaken government buildings are largely empty of civilians, allowing them to use air cover more liberally.
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