ISIS executes 100 Iraqi civilians in Mosul as combat enters sensitive stage
ISIS terrorists had massacred more than 100 people in Western Mosul last Friday, the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights (IOHR) said in a statement.
The statement, citing unnamed local sources from Mosuls Old City, added that the terrorists killed members of 22 families from the al-Mekkawi area after 22 young men from those families tried to escape the district with the help of a Syrian smuggler.
The smuggler had reached a deal with the young men two months earlier, but the plan was dropped when Iraqi security forces started an operation to liberate the region. ISIL members, having found out about the scheme, executed the young men, their families as well as the smugglers family.
The IOHR statement said the executions were carried out inside public baths in Mekkawi, and 106 corpses were left there for 14 hours before civilian-owned vehicles came and took them away for burial.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi announced in October 2016, the start of a military operation to recapture Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq which fell to the ISIL since 2014.
The Iraqi defense ministry announced earlier in January that the ISIL terrorist group has lost over 50 percent of its militants in the city of Mosul in Nineveh province as Iraqi troops have managed to recapture the Eastern part of the de facto Capital of the ISIL.
“The intelligence obtained by us indicates that there have been over 6,000 ISIL terrorists in Mosul and around 3,400 of them have been killed in battles with Iraq’s joint military forces in the major city of Nineveh province,” Iraqi Defense Ministry Spokesman Colonel Laith al-Naimi said.
He added that over 250 bomb-laden vehicles and the entire bomb-making workshops of the terrorists have been destroyed in Mosul which means that the ISIL has been paralyzed by the Iraqi forces.
The Iraqi Army started a new phase of its military operation in Nineveh province late February to drive the ISIL terrorists out of their bastion in the Western part of the city of Mosul.
With half the city under the control of Baghdad forces, the Iraqi Armed Forces will likely face heavier resistance in the Western part of Mosul, as the ISIL attempts to hold onto their final positions.
Local sources had disclosed that the ISIL is preventing civilians in the Western part of the city of Mosul from leaving the region in a move to use them as human shields as the terrorist group’s positions are under intensifying attacks by various troops.
Commanders expect the battle in Western Mosul to be more difficult, in part because tanks and armoured vehicles cannot pass through the narrow alleyways that crisscross ancient districts of the city.
Source: /Farsnews
