MOSUL: Iraqi forces pressed forward on Monday with an offensive against jihadist-held areas of Mosul as the United Nations warned of grave danger to civilians in the final stages of the battle.

More than seven months into the massive operation to recapture Mosul from the militant Islamic State group, Iraqi forces have retaken the city’s east and large parts of its western side, but the jihadists are putting up tough resistance in areas they still hold.

“Our units are continuing to advance... and entered Al-Saha al-Oula and Al-Zinjili and Al-Shifaa neighbourhoods and the Republican Hospital,” said Joint Operations Command spokesman Yahya Rasool.

IS was using “explosives-rigged vehicles and snipers and suicide bombers” to target Iraqi forces, he said.

The areas mentioned by Rasool — which are located north of Mosul’s Old City, where IS also still holds significant territory — are the main targets of the offensive, which was announced on Saturday. The Joint Operations Command also said on Monday that Iraqi aircraft had dropped leaflets over Mosul urging residents to leave IS-held areas — the second time this has been done within the past week.

This is the opposite of the strategy Iraqi forces employed in east Mosul, where they urged civilians to stay in their homes, and may encourage even more people to leave.

“In the past several weeks, 160,000 civilians have fled, and our expectation is that, because of this order (from the government), we could be seeing a similar number of civilians flee in coming days,” Lise Grande, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, said.

“Altogether, since the start of Mosul, 760,000 civilians have left their homes, and we are looking at the possibility of another 200,000 civilians leaving,” she said.

Of the 760,000 civilians who have fled, some 150,000 have since returned home, leaving more than 600,000 currently displaced. “We are deeply concerned that right now, in the last final stages of the campaign to retake Mosul, that the civilians... in (IS) areas are probably at graver risk now than at any other stage of the campaign,” said Grande.

She said that the UN estimates there are between 180,000 and 200,000 civilians in jihadist-held areas of Mosul, the majority of them in the Old City area.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2017