NATION/WORLD
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
East Oregonian
Iraqis push toward ISIS-held
Mosul in long-awaited offensive
Backed by U.S.
airstrikes, artillery
bombardments
KHAZER, Iraq (AP) —
The long-awaited offensive to
retake Mosul from the Islamic
State group began Monday
with a volley of U.S.-led
coalition airstrikes and heavy
artillery bombardments on
a cluster of villages along
the edge of Iraq’s historic
Nineveh plain east of the
militant-held city.
Iraq’s Kurdish peshmerga
ighters led the initial assault,
advancing slowly across open
ields littered with booby-
trapped explosives as plumes
of black and orange smoke
rose overhead — the opening
phase of an unprecedented
campaign expected to take
weeks if not months, and
involve more than 25,000
troops.
By the end of the day
Kurdish forces had retaken
some 80 square miles,
according to the president
of Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
Peshmerga commanders on
the ground estimated the
offensive retook nine villages
and pushed the frontline with
IS back ive miles.
But the forces’ hold
appeared fragile and the gains
largely symbolic. Some of the
villages were so small they
comprised no more than a few
dozen homes, and most were
abandoned.
And though some troops
were less than 20 miles from
Mosul’s edges, it was unclear
how long it would take to
reach the city itself, where
more than 1 million people
still live. Aid groups have
warned of a mass exodus
of civilians that could over-
whelm refugee camps.
Iraq’s second-largest city,
Mosul fell to IS in the summer
of 2014 as the militants swept
over much of the country’s
north and central areas. Weeks
later the head of the extremist
group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,
announced the formation of a
self-styled caliphate in Iraq
and Syria from the pulpit of a
AP Photo
Kurdish security forces take up a position as they ight
overlooking the Islamic State-controlled in villages
surrounding Mosul, in Khazer, about 19 miles east of
Mosul, Iraq, Monday.
Mosul mosque.
If successful, the liber-
ation of the city would be
the biggest blow yet to the
Islamic State group. After a
string of victories by Iraqi
ground forces over the past
year, IS now controls less
than half the territory it once
held, and Iraqi Prime Minister
Haider Al-Abadi has pledged
the ight for Mosul will lead
to the liberation of all Iraqi
territory from the militants
this year.
Al-Abadi
announced
the start of the operation on
state television before dawn
Monday, launching the coun-
try’s toughest battle since
American troops withdrew
from Iraq nearly ive years
ago.
“These forces that are
liberating you today, they
have one goal in Mosul,
which is to get rid of Daesh
and to secure your dignity,”
al-Abadi said, addressing the
city’s residents and using the
Arabic acronym for IS. “God
willing, we shall win.”
In Washington, Defense
Secretary Ash Carter called
the Mosul operation “a
decisive moment in the
campaign” to defeat IS. The
U.S. is providing airstrikes,
training
and
logistical
support, but insists Iraqis
are leading the campaign.
On Monday, Pentagon press
secretary Peter Cook said a
small number of U.S. troops
were serving as advisers to
Iraqi and peshmerga forces on
the outskirts of Mosul.
More than 25,000 Iraqi
and Kurdish troops will be
involved in the operation,
launching assaults from ive
directions, according to Iraqi
Brig. Gen. Haider Fadhil.
The troops include elite
Iraqi special forces who are
expected to lead the charge
into the city, as well as the
Kurdish forces, Sunni tribal
ighters, federal police and
state-sanctioned Shiite mili-
tias.
In a political deal between
the country’s Kurdish region
and the central government,
it was agreed that Kurdish
forces would advance irst,
bringing the villages they
retake under their regional
control, according to Iraqi
special forces Lt. Col. Ali
Hussein.
Once the Kurdish forces
advance far enough, the Iraqi
special forces will move to
the new front and pick up the
ight.
Speaking at a news confer-
ence just a few miles from
the frontline, the Kurdistan
region’s President Massoud
Barzani called the Mosul
operation a “turning point in
the war against terrorism,”
but said there was not yet a
plan for governing the region
after the ight. Political and
military oficials in the Kurd-
istan region have previously
said the peshmerga will not
withdraw from any territory
they retake.
Saud Masoud, a soldier
with Iraq’s special forces
watched
the
frontline
on the horizon Monday
while waiting for orders to
advance. Originally from the
Christian village of Bartella,
the outskirts of which were
obscured by plumes of
smoke, he said he personally
didn’t want his hometown to
become part of the country’s
Kurdistan region, but he
understood why Iraqi leaders
struck the deal.
“People are tired of the
situation, very tired honestly,
so everyone including myself
is willing to compromise,” he
said.
As airstrikes and heavy
artillery pounded the squat,
dusty buildings, the area —
historically home to religious
minorities brutally oppressed
by IS — was almost
completely empty of civilians,
thus allowing air power to do
much of the heavy lifting.
Lt. Col. Mohammad
Darwish said the main roads
and ields were littered with
homemade bombs and that
suicide car bomb attacks
slowed progress.
The IS-run news agency,
Aamaq, said the group carried
out eight suicide attacks
against Kurdish forces and
destroyed two Humvees
belonging to the Kurdish
forces and Shiite militias east
of the city.
Kurdish forces conirmed
at least one such attack.
Hisham Kazar, a Kurdish
peshmerga ighter said one
of his relatives died Monday
as the Mosul operation got
underway when a suicide car
bomber rammed the Humvee
he was riding in.
The operation so far hasn’t
run into what is expected to
be one of its most signiicant
obstacles: Mosul’s civilian
population of more than a
million people. The United
Nations said Monday that
the largest wave of displaced
people is expected to begin
next week as Iraqi forces enter
territory where thousands are
living.
Page 9A
U.S. policing leader
apologizes for
historical racial abuse
SAN DIEGO (AP) —
The president of one of the
largest police organizations
in the United States on
Monday apologized for
historical mistreatment of
minorities, calling it a “dark
side of our shared history”
that must be acknowledged
and overcome.
The reaction from
leaders of the Black Lives
Matter movement was
mixed, saying words
needed to be backed by
actions, while the head
of an oficers’ union in
Minnesota said there was
no need to apologize.
Terrence Cunningham,
president of the Inter-
national Association of
Chiefs of Police, said at the
group’s annual conference
that police have historically
been a face of oppression,
enforcing laws that ensured
legalized discrimination
and denial of basic rights.
He was not more speciic.
Cunningham
said
today’s oficers are not to
blame for past injustices.
He did not speak in detail
about modern policing, but
said events over the past
several years have under-
mined public trust.
“While we obviously
cannot change the past, it is
clear that we must change
the future,” Cunningham
said. “We must forge a
path that allows us to move
beyond our history and
identify common solu-
tions to better protect our
communities.
“For our part, the irst
step in this process is for
law enforcement and the
(International Association
of Chiefs of Police) to
acknowledge and apol-
ogize for the actions of
the past and the role that
our profession has played
in society’s historical
mistreatment of communi-
ties of color,” he said.
Russia sets brief cease-ire
for Aleppo as strikes kill 36
BEIRUT
(AP)
—
Russian and Syrian forces
will halt hostilities for eight
hours in the eastern districts
of Aleppo, Russia’s military
announced on Monday, a
day on which opposition
activists said their airstrikes
killed at least 36 people,
including several children,
in and around the divided
city.
The two militaries will
observe a “humanitarian
pause” between 8 a.m. and
4 p.m. on Oct. 20 to allow
civilians and militants safe
passage out of the city, Lt.
Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of
Russia’s general staff said
in Moscow. Militants, the
wounded and sick would
be allowed to evacuate to
the neighboring rebel-held
province of Idlib.
U.N.
humanitarian
oficials have pleaded with
combatants to observe
weekly 48-hour cease-ires
to allow humanitarian relief
into the city’s besieged
eastern
districts,
but
Russian and Syrian forces
have only escalated their
aerial and ground assault
on the rebel-held areas in
recent weeks. The airstrikes
have claimed hundreds of
lives, wounded many, lat-
tened apartment buildings
and laid waste to the already
crippled medical sector.
Russia’s U.N. Ambas-
sador Vitaly Churkin told
reporters at U.N. head-
quarters in New York that
the eight-hour pause was a
unilateral halt to ighting.
A 48-hour or 72-hour
cease-ire “will require
some sort of mutual
arrangement,” he said.
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