Daesh leader Baghdadi ‘flees Mosul’ as Iraqi forces advance

MOSUL — Daesh chief Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi is reported to have abandoned Mosul, leaving local commanders behind to lead the battle against Iraqi forces advancing in the city.

With Iraqi troops making steady progress in their assault to retake Mosul from the extremists, a US defence official said Baghdadi had fled to avoid being trapped inside.

It was the latest sign that Daesh is feeling the pressure from twin US-backed offensives that have seen it lose much of the territory it once controlled in Iraq and Syria.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, the defence official said Baghdadi had left Mosul before Iraqi forces seized control of a key road at the beginning of this month, isolating the extremists in the city.

"He was in Mosul at some point before the offensive.... He left before we isolated Mosul and Tal Afar," a town to the west, the official said.

"He probably gave broad strategic guidance and has left it to battlefield commanders."

Baghdadi, who declared Daesh's cross-border "caliphate" at a Mosul mosque in 2014, in an audio message in November urged supporters to make a stand in the city rather than "retreating in shame".

Iraq launched the offensive to retake Mosul — which involves tens of thousands of soldiers, police and allied militia fighters — in October.

After recapturing its eastern side, the forces set their sights on the city's smaller but more densely populated west.

'Ran away like chickens' 

In recent days Iraqi forces have retaken a series of neighbourhoods in west Mosul as well as the provincial government headquarters and a museum where Daesh militants filmed themselves destroying priceless artefacts.

On Thursday, Iraqi forces were "combing the city centre area to defuse [bombs in] homes and shops and buildings," Lieutenant Colonel Abdulamir Al-Mohammedawi of Iraq's elite Rapid Response Unit told AFP.

The area is located on the edge of Mosul’s Old City, a warren of narrow streets and closely spaced houses, which could see some of the toughest fighting of the battle.

“Currently there is no order from the operations command to advance toward the Old City. We will advance when this order is issued,” Mohammedawi said.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians are believed to still be trapped under Daesh rule in Mosul.

Those who did manage to escape the city said the militants were growing increasingly desperate.

“We were used as human shields,” said Abdulrazzaq Ahmed, a 25-year-old civil servant, who escaped along with hundreds of other civilians to Iraqi police waiting outside the city.

Rayan Mohammed, a frail 18-year-old who was once given 60 lashes for missing prayers, said the militants were scrambling in the face of the Iraqi offensive.

“They ran away like chickens,” he said.

Marines deployed to Syria 

West Mosul is the most heavily populated area under Daesh control and one of two major urban centres it still holds, along with Raqqa in Syria.

In Syria, a US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has been advancing on Raqa.

A US official said Wednesday that a Marine Corps artillery battery had been sent into Syria to support the battle for Raqqa — joining around 500 American special operations fighters who have been training and assisting the SDF.

The United States has been leading a coalition since mid-2014 carrying out air strikes against the militants in both Syria and Iraq.

Strikes on an Daesh-held northern Syrian village thought to have been conducted by the coalition killed at least 23 civilians on Thursday, a monitor said.

Among the dead were at least eight children and six women, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The coalition said earlier this month that its raids had unintentionally killed at least 220 civilians since 2014 in both countries.

Elsewhere in Syria, Turkish troops and their rebel allies have pushed south from the Turkish border and driven Daesh out of the northern town of Al Bab.

Russian-backed government troops have meanwhile swept eastwards from Syria’s second city Aleppo and seized a swathe of countryside from the extremists.

The US defence official said Daesh was now looking beyond the seemingly inevitable losses of Mosul and Raqqa.

“They... are still making plans to continue to function as a pseudo-state centred in the Euphrates River Valley,” the official said.

Wedding party suicide attack 

Even with the territory they control greatly reduced, the extremists remain a major threat.

At least 26 people were killed late on Wednesday when two suicide bombers attacked a celebration being held the night before a wedding north of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said.

The bombings in Al Hajaj area, north of the city of Tikrit, also wounded 25 people.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but Daesh carries out frequent suicide bombings targeting both civilians and members of the security forces in Iraq.