Families fleeing Mosul as Iraqi forces move in are taking their “official” documents with them but also wondering who will recognise the stamp of the Islamic State group.

From the outside, the “caliphate” IS proclaimed in June 2014 could look like a lawless land run by maniacal jihadists on a permanent murderous rampage.

But two years later, surviving civilians were also emerging from a parallel state where people were born, married and buried and where an army of registrars produced “official” documents.

In Mosul’s freshly retaken eastern neighbourhood of Intisar, Umm Ahmed, wearing a veil that shows only her eyes, waved her husband’s death certificate.

She stayed two years without any news of him and it was only when the jihadists recently gave her this paper that she knew he had probably been executed.

The certificate had “Islamic State – Caliphate” letterhead under the group’s black flag and was produced by the “Diwan of Justice”.

Since IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared himself the caliph in Mosul more than two years ago, residents have had to adapt their vocabulary to the new regime, said Umm Ibrahim.

“There were no ministries, there was a ‘diwan’ of health and a ‘diwan’ of justice,” she explained, using the term IS borrowed from the early Muslim caliphates for its government departments.

The 49-year-old had to deal with the “diwan of justice” when her son was married.

“We had to go to the Islamic court and an Islamic State sheikh officiated the marriage,” she recounted.

“Nobody spoke Mosul Arabic there, they all spoke Arabic but accents were from all over,” said Umm Ibrahim.

Mosul, with a pre-2014 population of close to two million by some estimates, was the largest city in the caliphate when Baghdadi proclaimed it in June 2014.

With Raqa, the Syrian city which is also under attack from anti-IS forces, Mosul became the de facto capital of the jihadist group’s experiment in statehood.

– ‘Everything is forbidden’ –

The group divided territory it held into “wilayat” or states that in some cases do not follow either country’s existing administrative map.

They ran hospitals, schools, levied taxes and distributed benefits, following principles they claimed to be faithful to the early days of Islam.

But to most Iraqis, that regime was simply extortion under the guise of religion.

They had created “a state within the state, with laws, contracts and regulations with which you had to comply,” said Umm Ibrahim.

After several fines, Mohammed had to close down his cafe, which used to be filled with cigarette smoke, music and locals playing pool and dominos every night.

“For the Islamic State, I have everything that is (religiously) forbidden: pool is forbidden, cigarettes are forbidden, cafes are forbidden,” he said, laughing.

He paid a fine of 50 US dollars the first time, the second was double the amount and eventually he closed down.

“It was that or prison time and lashes,” said his neighbour Ammar, a 43-year-old whose children have not been to school in two years.

“Their school is just brainwashing. They kept telling the children: ‘Go to the mosque to swear allegiance to Baghdadi’,” he said.

Even hospitals became a revenue-generating operation for the jihadists, Ammar said.

“Everything came at a price for people like us, but they would get surgery for free. We had to pay all the time,” he ranted, pulling up one of his children’s shirt to show a scar resulting from surgery he said cost him his savings.

Nofa Salem and her husband also went to the Islamic court to register their marriage and not risk being arrested, or even executed, for adultery.

The young couple intentionally did not register the birth of their six-month-old daughter.

Now that they left the “caliphate”, they hope she can get a birth certificate that does not bear the jihadists’ black flag.

iafrica.com

The Daesh (ISIL or ISIS) terrorist group has used mustard gas during a military clash with government troops in Iraq’s Mosul, a report said.

tasnimnews.com

U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian forces announced their plan Sunday to retake the Islamic State group’s de facto capital of Raqqa, saying they hoped Turkey would not “interfere in internal Syrian affairs.”

The announcement by the Syria Democratic Forces, a coalition of Kurdish, Arab and Christian forces, was made Sunday at a press conference in Ein Issa, north of Raqqa, attended by commanders and spokespeople for the group. An official who read a statement said the operation to liberate Raqqa, dubbed the “Euphrates Rage” operation, had officially begun.

The statement said that 30,000 fighters will take part in the operation.

The announcement comes as U.S.-backed Iraqi forces had entered the eastern edges of the IS-held city of Mosul and were working to push deeper into the last IS urban bastion in Iraq. But the Kurdish officials said the two campaigns were not coordinated, but simply “good timing.”

The SDF is dominated by the main Syrian Kurdish fighting force known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG. The United States considers the group as the most effective force against the IS, but Turkey views them as a terror organization and claims it’s linked to Turkey’s outlawed Kurdish group. Turkish officials including President Recep Tayip Erdogan have said they will not accept a role for the Kurds in the liberation of Raqqa.

Turkey’s defense minister last week suggested that instead of the Kurds, Turkish-backed forces can present an “alternative.”

But Kurdish officials have rejected any role for Turkey, or the opposition forces it backs inside Syria, in the Raqqa campaign, and U.S. officials have also acknowledged that the YPG will be a major part of any Raqqa offensive.

“Our hope is that the Turkish state will not interfere in the internal affairs of Syria,” said an unidentified SDF official at Sunday’s press conference. “Raqqa will be free by its own sons.”

There was no immediate comment from Turkey or the U.S. on the Kurdish announcement.

U.S. officials have acknowledged that ousting IS from Raqqa poses tougher political challenges than the offensive on Mosul, and have suggested the initial stage would involve isolating the city before any forces try to move in.

The commander of anti-IS coalition forces, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, said last week that American intelligence has detected signs that Islamic State attacks against Western targets are being plotted from Raqqa, adding urgency to coalition plans to encircle and eventually assault the city.

“We know this plot-and-planning is emanating from Raqqa. We think we’ve got to get to Raqqa pretty soon.”

But coalition leaders have been struggling with the timing for the Raqqa campaign, not only because of the demands of the large Iraqi-led Mosul operation but also because the political and military landscape in Syria is more complicated. Townsend said more Syrian opposition fighters need to be recruited, trained and equipped for the Raqqa battle, but he and other officials have said in recent days that the Mosul and Raqqa operations will overlap.

Unlike in Iraq, where the coalition has a coherent government to work with, the U.S. and its coalition partners in Syria are relying on a hodge-podge of local Arab and Kurdish opposition groups, some of whom are fierce rivals. The tensions are exacerbated by the presence of Russian and Syrian forces on one side and Turkish forces on another.

Townsend said, however, that the YPG will necessarily be part of the offensive.

“The facts are these: The only force that is capable on any near-term timeline is the Syrian Democratic Forces, of which the YPG are a significant portion,” Townsend said. “So, we’re negotiating, we’re planning, we’re having talks with Turkey and we’re gonna take this in steps.”

ap.org

alalam.ir

UK intelligence sources believe that Daesh chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has managed to escape the besieged Iraqi town of Mosul, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson says

“It is a cruel irony that some of the intelligence we have, you may know, suggests that the gentleman in question has actually vacated the scene himself and is nonetheless using internet media to encourage people to take part in violence,” Johnson said in an address to Parliament on Friday.

He said Baghdadi may have fled Mosul using a series of underground tunnels that were uncovered by Iraqi forces, according to spy sources.

This is while, reports say the Daesh chief is now trapped in the city as a full-scale operation has been underway since last month to drive out Daesh terrorists from their last stronghold in Iraq.

The Iraqi army as well as various military groups in the country, including Shia, Sunni and Kurdish forces, managed to enter Mosul’s limits earlier this week for the first time since June 2014, when the city fell to Daesh. The forces are now closing in on the city from almost all directions.

On Thursday, the terrorist group released an audio message purportedly from their leader, al-Baghdadi, in which a man speaks confidently in Arabic about victory in Mosul and urges followers to continue fighting.

“Do not retreat,” ‘said the audio recording. “Holding your ground with honor is a thousand times easier than retreating in shame.”

Before taking control of the terrorist group, Baghdadi was once detained by US forces in the Iraqi town of Fallujah in the Anbar province on February 4, 2004, according to a Pentagon statement.

He was held until the following December at a prison at Camp Bucca, but a review board later recommended his “unconditional release,” according to the Pentagon.

He was first seen in public back in July 2014, when he was delivering a sermon at the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul.

The British foreign secretary further warned that Daesh will be “vindictive” as their defeat becomes inevitable.

“This is the toughest task that Iraq’s security forces have yet encountered, and success will take time,” Johnson said.

“The terrorists have threatened to inflict a scorched earth campaign once the loss of Mosul becomes inevitable,” he added.

Johnson also praised a so-called anti-terror campaign being conducted by British and US forces and some of their allies in Iraq and Syria as well as the presence of British forces in the region as “crucial to this effort.”

He said there are currently 500 British soldiers in Iraq, where they are helping to train the country’s armed forces.

The UK, along with the United States and some of their allies, has been conducting a so-called anti-terror campaign in Syria and neighboring Iraq for more than two years.

However, they have done little to stop the Takfiri terrorists; instead their air raids have killed many civilians, and caused extensive damage to the country’s infrastructure.

presstv.com

Elite special forces are terrifying ISIS soldiers in Iraq by wearing skull masks as they fight to take back Mosul.

The Golden Division is a US-trained group of special forces soldiers fighting on the front line as the operation to take back the ISIS controlled city continues.

Islamic State has been carrying out mass killings in Mosul amid a government-led offensive to retake the city, according to reports made to the UN human rights office.

Spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said the office has received reports of an incident in which IS allegedly killed 50 of its own militants at the Ghazlani military base in Mosul “for alleged desertion”.

Ms Shamdasani also told reporters that her office has had reports indicating four women were killed and 17 other civilians wounded in air strikes on Wednesday in the Quds neighbourhood of eastern Mosul.

She also cited reports that IS has been holding nearly 400 women captive in the nearby town of Tal Afar.

The updates came as heavy fighting erupted in eastern neighbourhoods of Mosul as Iraqi special forces launched an assault deeper into urban areas of the city and swung round to attack IS militants from a second entry point in the north east.

Columns of armoured vehicles wound through open desert to open the new front, pushing through dirt embankments, drawing heavy fire and calling in air strikes to enter the middle class neighbourhoods of Tahrir and Zahara. The area was once named after former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Lieutenant Colonel Muhanad al-Timimi said three militants in separate explosives-laden vehicles tried to attack the troops but they were destroyed, including a bulldozer that was hit by an air strike from the US-led coalition supporting the offensive.

Earlier, at the direct eastern approach to the city’s urban centre, militants holed up in a building fired a rocket at an Abrams tank, disabling it and sending its crew fleeing from the smoking vehicle, seemingly unharmed. The advance in that area then stalled.

The day’s fighting has been the most intense urban combat in Mosul since the Iraqi offensive began over two weeks ago to drive IS from Iraq’s second-largest city.

The early morning push began with artillery and mortar strikes on the Aden, Tahrir and Quds districts, just west of special forces footholds in the Gogjali and Karama neighbourhoods, Lt Col al-Timimi said. Both sides opened up with small arms and mortar fire after an artillery barrage by special forces, ahead of their advance.

IS is fighting to hold Mosul as Iraqi forces and allied Kurdish troops squeeze in from all directions with US-led coalition support, mostly from air strikes and reconnaissance.

On Tuesday, Iraqi troops entered the city limits for the first time in more than two years. Soldiers had withdrawn from Mosul in 2014 in the face of an IS blitz that seized large areas of territory in Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

Now the Iraqi forces are gearing up for urban warfare expected to take weeks, if not months, as they work their way neighbourhood by neighbourhood, going through a warren of dense buildings prone to booby traps and ambushes.

More than a million civilians are stuck in the city, complicating the military’s efforts to advance without harming innocents.

IS militants have driven thousands of them deeper into the city’s built-up areas, apparently for use as human shields, while hundreds of others have fled in recent days towards government-controlled territory despite the uncertainty of resettlement in displacement camps.

Mosul is the last major IS stronghold in Iraq, and expelling the militant group from it would be a major blow to the survival of its self-declared “caliphate” that stretches into Syria. When IS seized Mosul and other territory in 2014, the much larger Iraqi military had been neglected and demoralised by corruption.

Iraqi forces have made uneven progress in closing in on the city since the operation began on October 17. Advances have been slower to the south, with government troops still 20 miles away, although they seized a handful of villages late last week.

Kurdish fighters and Iraqi army units are deployed to the north, while government-sanctioned Shiite militias are sweeping in from the west to try to cut off any IS escape route.

One of the leading Shiite militias, the Hezbollah Brigades, said on Wednesday that its fighters had gained control of a highway linking Mosul to the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the militants’ self-proclaimed caliphate.

The militias’ umbrella group, the Popular Mobilisation Units, say they will not enter Mosul and will instead focus on retaking Tal Afar, a town to the west that had a Shiite majority before it fell to IS in 2014.

belfasttelegraph.co.uk

farsnews.com

At least two US military trainers were shot dead in Jordan on Friday when the car they were in failed to stop at the gate of a military base and was fired on by Jordanian security forces, a Jordanian military source said.

“There was an exchange of fire at the entrance to the base after an attempt by the trainers’ vehicle to enter the gate without heeding orders of the guards to stop,” the military source said.

The incident occurred at the Prince Faisal air base in southern Jordan, which is a close ally of the United States.

thenational.ae