Iraqis will be ready for Mosul ops in early October: US general
US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joe Dunford says preparations for a long-anticipated operation by Iraqi forces to retake the militant-held city of Mosul will be finished in a matter of days.
Dunford said during a military event in Washington on Wednesday that Iraq would be ready by early next month to attack the Daesh Takfiri terrorists in the major city, which is the last important urban spot under the control of the group in northern Iraq.
“We assess today that the Iraqis will have in early October all the forces ... that are necessary for operations in Mosul,” Dunford said, adding, “Timing of that operation now is really just a function of a political decision by Prime Minister (Haider al-)Abadi.”
For months, Iraq has been preparing for the assault on Daesh in Mosul, the country’s second largest city which slipped into the hands of the terrorists in the summer of 2014. Government forces have managed to recapture all the other places that Daesh had seized, with the last major one being the city of Fallujah, about 50 kilometers west of the capital Baghdad, which was liberated in late June.
The operation for Mosul is highly significant as estimates say about half of the city’s pre-war population of two million still remain there. Daesh, based on intelligence information, has between 4,000 and 5,000 terrorists in the city, making the situation more complicated.
Dunford claimed that the United States and its allies, which have been carrying out airstrikes against purported Daesh positions in Iraq and neighboring Syria over the past two years, would spare no efforts in helping the Iraqis in the battle. Washington has thousands of soldiers remaining on the Iraqi soil nearly 14 years after the US invasion of Iraq.
Iraq, however, has mostly relied on its army and volunteer fighters in the previous anti-Daesh operations. The Kurdish Peshmerga fighters will also join the Mosul operation from the north of the city.
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