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Iraqi forces raise flag at Mosul University in push against ISIS

Published January 14, 2017 FoxNews.com Facebook0 Twitter0 Email Print A member of Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) stands in a military vehicle at the University of Mosul during a battle with Islamic State militants, in Mosul, Iraq, January 14, 2017. REUTERS/Ahmed Saad - RTSVHSV Iraqi special forces raised the Iraqi flag above the buildings at the Mosul University complex on Friday as they continued the battle for control of the city against Islamic State militants.

"We congratulate the Iraqi Security Forces on their continued progress in Eastern Mosul,” U.S. army Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for the U.S.-led anti-IS coalition said in a statement. “Work still needs to be done but ISIL's days in Mosul are quickly coming to an end.

ISIS Hotbed Looms as Risk in Mosul Fight

Iraqi forces closing in on Islamic State-held Mosul are bypassing pockets controlled by militants such as the strategic town of Hawija, leaving the extremists free to launch counterattacks elsewhere in Iraq.

But just days into the Mosul offensive, Islamic State mounted a massive coordinated attack on oil-rich Kirkuk,

ISIS’s Capital Still Hasn’t Been Cut Off

The distance from the Syrian city of Raqqa to Iraq’s Mosul is about 230 miles as the crow flies, and closer to 280 miles if one drives between the two “capitals” controlled by the self-declared Islamic State

As The Guardian reported in mid-November: “Although heavily targeted throughout the campaign, ISIS has kept a supply line between Raqqa and Mosul largely open. The highway, in particular, has been a major conduit for trade and the flow of fighters.”

Hundreds of ISIS fighters are fleeing Mosul in Iraq and crossing into neighboring Syria as coalition forces close in on the city, a powerful tribal leader in the region says.

dozens of ISIS militants and their families were fleeing the city each day, and crossing into Syria at Ba'aaj, an ISIS-controlled crossing point south of Sinjar.

78 towns liberated, 772 ISIS fighters killed in first week of battle, says operations center

The Iraqi army was trying on Thursday to reach a town south of Mosul where Islamic State has reportedly executed dozens to deter the population against any attempt to support the U.S.-led offensive on the jihadists' last major city stronghold in Iraq.

slamic State fighters are keeping up their fierce defense of the southern approaches to Mosul, which has held up Iraqi troops there and forced an elite army unit east of the city to put a more rapid advance on hold.

The fall of Mosul would mark Islamic State's effective defeat in Iraq.

Defusing ISIS bombs with bare hands and little else

Along a dusty village track just 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Mosul, a Peshmerga pick up truck leads us to a small house. We drive slowly, and in single file. There are hidden dangers all around.

It is a sobering show and tell -- and it isn't over yet. He brings us a suicide belt worn by an ISIS fighter who was killed before he could detonate it. Captain Sadk defused this deadly explosive too -- and an even bigger one he produces from the back of the pick up.

THE DISAPPEAREDU.S. Can’t Find ISIS Prisoners

Iraq’s security forces have allowed the U.S. military to interview fewer than “a handful” of detained fighters under Iraqi control since the Mosul offensive began in mid-October, a U.S. defense official told The Daily Beast.

Iraqi officials have said hundreds of ISIS fighters have died so far in the three-week-long battle; U.S. officials estimate a smaller number have fled.

U.S. Forces Play Crucial Role Against ISIS in Mosul

A flurry of attacks were carried out by the American-led coalition in and around Mosul on Saturday, some involving the dropping of multiple bombs.

Iraq’s federal police have fully secured the Mosul airport, while Iraq’s elite counterterrorism service seized a nearby military base last week.

Hundreds of Islamic State militants are thought to have been killed since Iraqi forces launched an offensive to retake Mosul last week, the US military says.

"This relentless campaign of strikes has removed hundreds of fighters, weapons, and key leaders from the battlefield in front of the Iraqi advance," he added.

IS has previously used chemical weapons in attacks on Iraqi and coalition forces, and there are fears that it might do so again inside Mosul, where more than a million civilians live.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group has been committing a wave of atrocities around the Iraqi town of Mosul, according to the reports received by the United Nations, as Iraqi troops close in to capture the ISIL stronghold. The allegations, which remain "preliminary", have come from a range of civilian and government sources, who cannot be named for security reasons, the UN rights office spokesman Rupert Colville said on Tuesday.

The campaign to retake Mosul comes after months of planning and involves more than 25,000 Iraqi troops, Kurdish forces, Sunni tribal fighters and state-sanctioned Shia militias.

SIS has "executed" 232 people near Mosul and taken tens of thousands of people to use as human shields against advancing Iraqi forces

terror group had carried out the mass killings on Wednesday,

42 civilians in Hammam al-Alil,

Islamic State has moved hundreds of civilians from villages around the city to use as human shields,

United Nations said the militants may have killed nearly 200 people.

hit a Shiite mosque in northern Iraq, killing more than a dozen women and children.

Allies Set Sights on Raqqa in Battle Against Islamic State

The U.S. and its allies are preparing to launch the invasion of Islamic State’s Raqqa stronghold before the recapture of Mosul in Iraq is complete

U.S. officials hope to start the invasion of Raqqa as soon as the coming weeks, provided the Mosul campaign proceeds as planned, though the push for the militant group’s de facto capital in Syria remains complicated by regional political sensitivities that haven’t appeared in the fight for Mosul.

As part of the local Christian population, there were only two choices facing Anne, her husband Sabhan and their two children: run or die.

Before the US-led invasion of 2003, Iraq was home to an estimated Christian population of more than a million. Christians had already become a target for extremist groups like al Qaeda long before the emergence of ISIS, but Anne's family remained in Mosul.

Photos showed militants vandalizing monasteries and churches, smashing statues and replacing the cross with their black flag of terror.

BAGHDAD Iraqi special forces swept through the campus of Mosul University on Sunday to clear it of any remaining Islamic State militants after taking full control of the area, a spokesman said.

"The university is completely liberated and forces are sweeping the complex for any hiding militants," CTS spokesman Sabah al-Numan told Reuters by phone on Sunday. "Most buildings are booby-trapped so we're being cautious."

Loss of Mosul could spell the end of the Iraqi side of IS's self-styled caliphate, which it declared from the city after sweeping through vast areas of Iraq and Syria.

Iraqi forces are nearing what is expected to be the toughest part of the fight for the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. As troops push toward the river dividing the city, they face new tactics from Islamic State fighters adapting to an urban environment and the limitations of U.S. air and artillery support.

"Picture any large metropolitan city on the U.S. East Coast — dense, older cities with smaller streets. And then picture having to eradicate all crime and any enemy force in there," says Brig. Gen. Scott Efflandt."It requires street by street, house by house, room by room operation," he said. "There's no quick way to do it. You have to walk, you have to climb stairs, you have to open doors and then repeat the process again and again and again and then when you're doing that you have to leave someone behind to guard the area you just went through. "That's without U.S. troops on the frontlines.

held a press conference on a hill overlooking Sinjar, a town in the northwestern corner of Iraq

hey were routed from it by the Islamic State, or ISIS, in August of 2014.

After a retinue of bodyguards spirited the President away in a sport-utility vehicle, the foreign correspondents and local journalists headed down the hill to view the damage

‘Islamic State’ Turning Into a Guerrilla Army, Top General Warns

The capital of the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq is now under assault. But ISIS isn’t going anywhere. Instead, the terror group is beginning to rebrand itself from a “caliphate” to an insurgency

It could well mean that there will be no “lasting defeat” of ISIS, even if it loses control of Iraq’s second-largest city, despite Secretary of Defense Ash Carter’s claim of such a victory just four days ago