(The Wall Street Journal)- The campus is one of the two main facilities in Mosul that U.S. and Iraqi officials said the militants used to build bombs, develop chemical weapons and treat wounded fighters. Iraqi forces seized the other facility, a hospital, last week.
“If they lose the campus, their fighters and supporters will lose their morale. For them, losing the campus means losing the eastern side of the city,” said Gen. Sami al-Aridi, a commander with the forces leading the push into the university.
Col. John Dorrian, spokesman for the U.S.-led international coalition battling Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, said the progress at the university and other parts of eastern Mosul indicated Islamic State’s “days in Mosul are quickly coming to an end.”
The university campus has repeatedly come under Iraqi and U.S.-led airstrikes since last year.
Iraq has made plodding progress in the battle for Mosul, with gains measured in streets rather than miles.
The breach of the campus suggested Iraqi troops were gaining momentum. The university covers as much territory as a typical neighborhood in Mosul—but one rife with militants and devoid of civilians, Iraqi officials said. Iraqi forces so far have taken several buildings, including dorms and the technical college, officials said on Friday.
The Mosul campaign began on Oct. 17 and initially moved along the southern, eastern and northern edges of the city. But the fight got bogged down by late November. Militants put up a tough fight in the densely populated neighborhoods of eastern Mosul, where most residents stayed in their homes at the encouragement of the Iraqi government and out of fear for the perils of fleeing. Some 100,000 out of the estimated 1.5 million in the city and its surrounding towns have fled.
The presence of the civilians, along with insufficient numbers of elite troops to wage intricate urban warfare, has led to heavy casualties, commanders and medical workers said. By mid-December, Iraqi advances in the city ground to a halt.
Late last month, commanders brought well-trained police SWAT units from the southern edges of the city into the east to fight in tandem with the counterterrorism forces. They also reduced the role of armored tank divisions that proved to be too lumbering to wage urban combat.
At the same time, Islamic State ability to build and equip car bombs, their most deadly weapon, was depleted by the loss of bomb making factories to Iraqi forces and the lack of willing suicide bombers, Iraqi officials said.
The changes have led to rapid advances toward the Tigris in recent days, said Gen. Maan al-Saadi, a senior officer with the U.S.-trained Counterterrorism Division. “This has reduced the enemy’s pressure on our troops,” he said.
The benefits came into focus last week, when newly deployed troops from the Emergency Response Division, a police SWAT force, reclaimed the large Al-Salam Hospital complex in about six hours.
The hospital had been an Islamic State base and was the site of a withering ambush of Iraqi Army troops last month, which led to the reconsideration of the battle plan. The Army’s 9th Armored Division had made a bold raid on the massive facility, but hours later militants ambushed the force. They had to be rescued by counterterrorism units and U.S. airstrikes on the hospital.
Commanders said the episode highlighted the need for more nimble forces that rely less on heavy weapons and tanks.
“It was a step-by-step approach,” Brig. Gen. Abbas al-Jubouri of the Emergency Response Division said of last week’s success in wresting back the strategic facility.
The 7-storey main building of the hospital campus is the highest in eastern Mosul and has panoramic views of the entire city. Militants there, with unfettered visibility, had built sniper nests in the windows of the stairwells.
During a visit to the hospital on Friday, some ammunition and weapons, including rocket tubes, were left scattered on the ground near medicines and adult diapers that remained stacked neatly on the shelves.
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