IRBIL, Iraq — Iraqi forces recaptured Mosul’s main government compound from the Islamic State on Tuesday, marking a strategic and symbolic advance into the northern city at the heart of the militant group’s self-proclaimed caliphate.
In a surprise pre-dawn raid, elite police units seized the government buildings in the Bab al-Tob neighborhood of western Mosul, including a central square where the militants carried out public executions. Commanders said that they faced limited resistance and that the group’s grip on the city is crumbling.
Mosul, home to more than a million people, is the last major city that the Islamic State controls in Iraq and the biggest population center it seized during a large-scale land grab in 2014. Tens of thousands of Iraqi forces have waged a bitter campaign since mid-October to retake the city, suffering heavy casualties as the militants have launched car bombings and other attacks.
The pace of the Iraqi advance has picked up in recent weeks after police forces led a push into the city’s western side, but the human toll is also mounting as the fighting moves through densely populated neighborhoods. The government estimates that about 10,000 people are fleeing each day.
Airwars, a Britain-based organization that tracks allegations of civilian deaths, said Tuesday that civilian casualties appear to have escalated this month, with hundreds reported killed in what it described as a “bloody harbinger.”
And despite the gains for Iraqi forces, the battle is far from over. Around half of the western side of the city is still held by the militants, said Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasoul, a spokesman for Iraq’s joint operations command. That includes the packed and narrow streets of the old city. The eastern half of Mosul was recaptured earlier this year. The city is split into two by the Tigris River.
“Reaching here is a message to the people of Mosul that the enemy that used to suffocate them is officially finished,” said Brig. Gen. Abbas al-Jabouri, chief of staff of the Iraqi police’s emergency response division, which led the attack toward Bab al-Tob.
He compared retaking the square there, the backdrop to many Islamic State execution videos, to the Americans reaching Firdos Square during their 2003 invasion of Iraq, when a towering statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down.
Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Baghdad, which has been closely supporting the fight with airstrikes and expertise, said retaking the government buildings provides Iraqi forces with a staging area to launch an assault on the old city. “Some of the streets are too narrow for vehicle traffic,” he said. “That sets them up for a tough fight.”
Islamic State militants have been blocking side streets with booby-trapped cars to “channel” the Iraqi advance in the direction of their choosing, Dorrian said.
