Like I mentioned last week, Iraqi forces have been launching major offensives into West Mosul, hoping to recapture the half of the city still under ISIL control, with 600,000 civilians still trapped within the western portion of the city. Recently, Iraqi Forces have claimed responsibility for liberating the\u00a0key neighborhoods of \u00a0al-Kur and al-Tawafa, which they state will allow safe passage for civilians fleeing West Mosul to enter the eastern portion of the city. Iraqi forces have also taken control of a main bridge into the city, which would lead the forces directly to the mosque where ISIL’s leader declared a caliphate in 2014. Of course I’m against any occupation by the Islamic State; however, I think the Iraqi forces are on the right track by prioritizing the safety of citizens remaining within West Mosul, over the total annihilation of the Islamic State. This conflict over the city has been going for nearly a year as of now, and although the eastern portion has been declared “liberated”, Iraqi forces (hopefully continually backed by coalition arms and supplies) still have a long road ahead of them in safeguarding Iraqi citizens, and eventually wiping out the Islamic State and its territorial claims in the city entirely. On a more negative note however, a car bomb in Baghdad has killed 21 people and wounded an additional 46, and though the Islamic State has not claimed responsibility as of yet, it is believed by Iraqi Police Forces to have been a planned terror attack on the capital. This recent attacks just highlights the issue that, even though Iraqi and coalition forces are making significant progress in fighting ISIL (i.e, West Mosul) and retaking previously ISIL controlled cities like Tikrit and Fallujah, the Islamic State still retains the ability to launch isolated attacks to spread terror, and even larger attacks to attempt to recapture cities they’ve previously lost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like I mentioned last week, Iraqi forces have been launching major offensives into West Mosul, hoping to recapture the half of the city still under ISIL control, with 600,000 civilians still trapped within the western portion of the city. Recently, Iraqi Forces have claimed responsibility for liberating the\u00a0key neighborhoods of \u00a0al-Kur and al-Tawafa, which they state will allow safe passage… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":516,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions\/516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}