Iraqi forces captured a neighborhood in east Mosul on Friday, pushing deeper into Daesh’s Iraqi stronghold and destroying three manufacturing sites for car bombs used in waves of suicide attacks, the campaign’s commander said.
Lt.-Gen. Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah said Counter Terrorism Service forces spearheading the seven-week operation to retake Mosul seized the Tamim district halfway between the city’s eastern edge and the River Tigris running through its center.
The elite troops, part of a US-backed, 100,000-strong coalition of Iraqi forces, have been fighting street battles with the militants and now control around half of the city’s eastern neighborhoods.
But progress has been slow as they have faced counterattacks by the militant fighters, who launched hundreds of the suicide car bombs and mortars and snipe fire attacks and used the city’s million residents as human shields. Yarallah also said in a statement that air strikes by Iraqi F-16 jets destroyed three production plants making car bombs in Mosul and three weapons stores. He gave no further details.
Iraq launched the operation to recapture Mosul on Oct. 17. Defeating Daesh in the largest city under its control would deal a major blow to its self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria, and its ambitions to govern territory.
In Iraq, it has already been forced to retreat from Tikrit, Ramadi and Falluja, although its ultra-hard-line fighters still hold large parts of remote regions near the Syrian border.

Source: Arab News