Amid signs of ISIS’ retreat in west Mosul, U.S. and Kurdish sources confirmed that hundreds of the organization’s foreign fighters have already fled the city in the direction of Syria.

Meanwhile, Iraqi forces announced liberating the government complex in the city where they raised the Iraqi flag, like reported by aawsat.com.

Chief Lieutenant General Raed Shaker Jawdat, commander of Iraqi Federal Police Forces told Asharq Al-Awsat: “The Federal Police Forces and the Rapid Response Units liberated the entire government complex and have raised the Iraqi flag on the governorate building in central Mosul.”

Following the Iraqi Army’s latest achievements, US Air Force Brigadier General Matthew Isler confirmed ISIS jihadists in Mosul were now “disorganized” and that some of their foreign members were trying to flee the city.

Reuters quoted Isler as saying that the foreigners were now leaving the battle to Iraqi ISIS militants. “I think that many of them are going to try to find a way out. They’re not well-organized and well-integrated and as a result of that, Iraqi security forces are able to make significant progress each day.”

Meanwhile, spokesperson for the Kurdistan Democratic Party Saeed Mamozini told Asharq Al-Awsat on Tuesday: “Based on information we received from inside the ISIS-controlled areas in the right part of Mosul, more than 300 fighters, including foreign commanders, fled at night to the Syrian city of Raqqa, the main stronghold of ISIS.”

Mamozini said the organization controls the desert routes from where it can smuggle its militants to Syria.

In the central square of Mosul, Iraqi forces continued their operation to liberate the Bab al-Toub area.

On Tuesday, the Iraqi Army’s Rapid Response Units, Counter-Terrorism Units and Federal Police Force announced they entirely recuperated Dawassa, Nabi Sheet and al-Danadan neighborhoods, which include several government buildings, the police station of the Nineveh governorate, the Central Bank and the Mosul museum.

Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia dealt a vital blow to Isis yesterday, cutting the extremists’ supply line in northern Syria.

The US-backed coalition seized the main road between Isis-held Raqqa and eastern Deir Ezzor province, which is partially controlled by the death cult.

The SDF fighters are now just five miles north of Raqqa, having liberated a number of villages along the route, like reported by morningstaronline.co.uk.

Their offensive, which started last month as part of Operation Euphrates Wrath, is intended to surround and capture the de facto capital of Islamic State’s selfdeclared caliphate.

The Syrian army’s recent march from Aleppo towards the Euphrates has cut the extremists’ supply line from Turkey. Spokesman Talal Sillo confirmed that SDF forces had cut the main supply line to Deir Ezzor. The eastern city of 200,000 itself has been besieged by Isis for three years now. But he added that it was too early to impose a siege on Raqqa with Isis still controlling areas west and south of the city.

The advance has angered Turkey, which has threatened to drive the Kurdish forces in the town of Manbij back across the Euphrates river, prompting the SDF to ask Russia and the Syrian army to act as a buffer between its fighters and Turkish forces currently stationed in al-Bab.

On Sunday the SDF-affiliated Manbij Military Council (MMC) released a statement to clarify its position on handing control of areas to the Syrian government in a deal signed in the presence of Russian officials. “We do not allow any passage of forces into the area,” the council said.

The MMC general command confirmed: “The agreement made between Russia and us, the Manbij Military Council, only comprises of the border line of the Arima region and Euphrates Shield.”

The statement said the town had been liberated from Isis by the US-backed coalition, “and we are carrying out the defence of Manbij as the same forces.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirmed yesterday that talks aimed at reaching a Syrian settlement between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin would take place at the end of the week.

A senior al-Qaeda leader was reportedly killed in a suspected U.S. airstrike in central Yemen, according to a source close to his family.

Yasir Ali al-Salmi, aka Abi al-Muhajir al-Ibbi, was killed along two other al-Qaeda militants in al-Baydaa province, the source told Anadolu Agency, requesting anonymity due to restrictions on talking to media, like reported by aa.com.tr.

The claim was not yet confirmed by the U.S. or Yemeni governments.

The U.S., which regards al-Qaeda branch in Yemen as a persistent threat to the region and its own interests, has used drones to hunt down al-Qaeda leaders in Yemen, which fell into civil war since 2014.

Last week, the Pentagon said that U.S. warplanes launched more than 30 airstrikes in Yemen in two days.

Al-Salmi was among six Yemenis released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo Bay in 2010.

His older brother Salah al-Salmi had committed suicide in Guantanamo in 2006, according to the U.S. authorities.

More than 2,000 fighters sent from Iran have been killed in Iraq and Syria, the head of Iran’s veterans’ affairs office said Tuesday.

“Some 2,100 martyrs have been martyred so far in Iraq or other places defending the holy mausoleums,” Mohammad Ali Shahidi told the state-run IRNA news agency.

Shahidi, who is head of Iran’s Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs, was speaking at a conference on martyrdom culture in Tehran.

The figure was more than double the number he gave in November, which referred only to Syria.

Iran is, with Russia, the main military backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and also organizes militias fighting the Daesh group in Iraq.

Shahidi did not provide details on the nationalities of those killed.

Iran oversees “volunteer” fighters recruited from among its own nationals as well as Shiite communities in neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The families of those killed in battle are given Iranian citizenship under a law passed last May.

Tehran refers to the fighters as “defenders of the shrines” — a reference to Shiite holy sites in Iraq and Syria that have been targeted by Sunni extremists.

A flotilla of Iranian warships left the country’s northern waters in the Caspian Sea for an overseas mission to Russia’s Dagestan

The Islamic State group has imposed an “Afghan-style” dress code on men in its Syrian stronghold Raqqa to help its fighters blend into the civilian population, a monitor and activists said

“For more than two weeks, Afghan-style clothing… has been imposed by Daesh,” said Abu Mohamed, an activist with the “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently” group, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, like reported by breitbart.com .

“Anyone who does not comply faces prison and fine,” he told AFP.

The new restriction comes as a Kurdish-Arab alliance of fighters nears Raqa, backed by the US-led coalition launching airstrikes against IS.

The rule “is an attempt to make it harder for airplanes and the Kurdish forces… to distinguish between civilians and Daesh members,” Abu Mohamed said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor of the war, also reported the new rule in Raqqa.

“The Islamic State has imposed Afghan-style dress on residents of Raqqa so that informants giving coordinates to the US-led coalition will not be able to distinguish between civilians and fighters,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

Abu Mohamed said there was a “state of alert” in Raqqa, with new checkpoints springing up and the Islamic State arresting anyone who describes the situation as dire.

“Prices are skyrocketing and there is no electricity or water,” he told AFP.

The Observatory also said civilians and the families of Islamic State families were attempting to flee into Raqqa province from neighboring Aleppo, where the Islamic State group is under assault in the east.

“Thousands of families in recent days have tried to reach the administrative borders of Raqqa province, along with around 120 families of fighters and commanders of IS,” the monitor said.

The Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces alliance advancing towards Raqqa on Monday cut a key supply route between the city and IS-held territory in Deir El-Zor province to the east.

The alliance is now eight kilometers (five miles) from Raqqa to the northeast, according to the Observatory.

It said Islamic State was preventing civilians from entering the province “but granted families of its fighters” a document allowing “passage to Raqqa city by boat as ground transportation is now impossible because the bridges across the Euphrates have been destroyed”.

The medical treatment of women and children, including a two-month-old baby,  for exposure to chemical agents near Iraq’s second-largest city Mosul has prompted suspicion that the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) may have used chemical weapons

Tens of thousands of U.S.-backed Iraqi forces and their allies are fighting to push ISIS out of Mosul, considered to be the terrorist group’s last major stronghold in Iraq, like reported by breitbart.com.

When the operation to retake the city began in mid-October 2016, U.S. officials expressed concern that ISIS would use crudely-designed chemical weapons, primarily packed with a sulfur mustard gas agent, to defend Mosul.

On Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced that their doctors were treating five children and two womenfor exposure to chemical agents, adding that it “condemns in the strongest possible terms the use of chemical weapons during fighting around the Iraqi city of Mosul.”

In collaboration with local medical teams, the ICRC is helping to treat the seven chemical weapons victims in Erbil, the capital of northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish Region, located east of Mosul.

ICRC did not explicitly say which side used the chemical agents on the women and children, which caused blisters, irritation, vomiting, and coughing.

However, the Washington Post (WaPo) reports:

Twelve people from the embattled city of Mosul, including a 2-month-old baby, have been treated for suspected exposure to a blistering chemical agent, medics said Saturday, as Islamic State militants strike back at government-held neighborhoods while trying to hold off advancing government forces.

The patients, who were being treated in a hospital in the northern Kurdish city of Irbil, displayed symptoms of a chemical attack, including blisters, burns, respiratory problems, irritation to the eyes and vomiting. They described three separate attacks with rockets carrying gas over the past week on neighborhoods in eastern Mosul recaptured by government forces.

Citing data collected by the research firm IHS Markit, Reuters reports “the Islamic State used chemical weapons at least 52 times in Iraq and Syria and at least 19 times in the areas around Mosul between 2014 and November 2016.”

“The ICRC had reinforced 13 medical centers in areas surrounding Mosul, some with capacity to treat gas attacks victims, ahead of the offensive that started in October.”

In northern Iraq alone, ISIS jihadists have already targeted U.S. troops, Kurdish Peshmerga forces, and civilians with chemical weapons.

On September 20, ISIS used chemical weapons against U.S. troops at the Qayyarah base, marking the first recorded chemical attack on the United States since the Islamic State’s rise in Iraq in 2014. No one was killed or wounded in the assault.

“We recognize this is real. They’re dead set on it. They would love to be able to use chemical weapons against us, against the Iraqis as they move forward,” U.S. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters in September 2016. “We are making every effort to make sure that we’re ready for it.”

The U.S.-backed Iraqi alliance fighting to retake Mosul has already liberated the eastern half of the city. They are now fighting to push ISIS out of the western half.

A local Iraqi news outlet cited an unnamed source as saying that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi admitted defeat in a recent “farewell speech,” telling his Iraqi fighters in the battlefield to “flee and hide” or “ blow themselves up when surrounded by Iraqi forces.

This Monday, the city of Nizhny Novgorod buried Artem Gorbunov, the 24-year-old Russian soldier killed on March 2 during the storming of Palmyra, according to the newspaper Kommersant.

Gorbunov’s widow told Kommersant that her husband’s unit was ambushed. Russia’s Defense Ministry and Gorbunov’s unit, however, have refused to confirm his death.

To date, Moscow has officially acknowledged only the deaths of 27 Russian soldiers in Syria.

Iraqi forces have launched a new offensive against four Daesh group districts in west Mosul on Sunday with house-to-house urban fighting taking place in the city.

The latest offensive has seen some of the fiercest fighting since the campaign to take west Mosul began, with pro-Baghdad forces heading for government complexes half a kilometre away, like reported by albawaba.com.

They have faced stern resistance from Daesh defenders with troops destroying six suicide car bombs before they exploded.

Black smoke was seen billowing over the west of the city, as militarised police units swept the west bank of the Tigris River.

“Federal police and Rapid Response Division forces are attacking al-Dindan and al-Dawasa neighbourhoods,” Iraq’s Joint Operations Command (JOC) said.

“Counter-Terrorism Service forces are attacking al-Sumood and Tal al-Ruman neighbourhoods, and the advance is still ongoing,” the JOC said.

The Counter-Terrorism Service and Rapid Response are two special forces units that have spearheaded operations in the Mosul area, while the federal police are a paramilitary police unit.

The army launched an offensive to retake west Mosul on 19 February but bad weather has slowed the progress of Iraqi troops in recent days.

In its latest push Iraqi forces captured an Daesh media centre in a residential area of west Mosul, but only after the militants set light to the building before fleeing the area.

“And after we came in and examined it completely, we discovered that it was a media centre that broadcast al-Bayan radio station.”
“The neighbours told us that they produced their adverts here,” said Lieutenant Colonel Abdulamir al-Mohammedawi, of the interior ministry’s elite Rapid Response Division.

Thousands fled the fighting last night, bringing a total of 45,000 people who have risked their lives to leave west Mosul since the operation began to retake it.

Around 750,000 are still believed to be trapped in west Mosul, one of the most densely packed areas under IS control.

This presents a challenging environment for Iraqi forces who will have to fight IS in well-defended, densely packed and narrow streets to retake west Mosul.

Yemen was hit by a fifth consecutive night of US air strikes targeting Al-Qaeda members, a Yemeni security source said on Monday.

The source said the early dawn raid hit the town of Al-Nasl in the southern Abyan province, which has been the target of air strikes as well as an Al-Qaeda attack on the army in recent days, according to digitaljournal.com.

There were no immediate reports of casualties in Monday’s raid.

Washington on Thursday launched a series of air and drone raids on Yemen, focused on the southern provinces of Abyan and Shabwa as well as Baida, slightly to the north.

Gunmen belonging to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) meanwhile launched two separate attacks on Yemeni troops in recent days, killing at least 10 soldiers in Abyan and the southern Hadramawt province.

AQAP on Sunday evacuated suspected members from more than one area hit by the raids, including one town where top AQAP commander Abdulelah al-Dhahab had reportedly been in hiding.

Two years of fighting in Yemen have allowed AQAP, which the US regards as the extremists’ most dangerous branch, to consolidate its grip on territory in southern and eastern Yemen.

The Pentagon has confirmed at least 30 strikes against AQAP since Thursday in coordination with the Yemeni government. Washington, which began drone strikes on Yemen after the attacks of September 11, 2001, rarely gives reports on the raids.

Yemen’s war pits troops loyal to President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi against Huthi rebels allied with forces supporting former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

In March 2015, a Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened in the fighting on behalf of Hadi, launching air strikes against the Iran-backed Huthis.

The United Nations estimates more than 7,500 people have been killed in the two years since and another 40,000 wounded.