Propping up US-Iraqi Mosul flop exposed Baghdad
US and Iraqi military reinforcements were rushed this week to the crumbling Mosul front line to prop up the few positions still held by the Iraqi army and prevent the US-backed offensive from crashing into defeat at ISIS hands. The Islamists took advantage of the transfer of Iraqi troops to Mosul for their first major terrorist attack in central Mosul in three months, killing 28 people and injuring 40, as well as declaring war on Jordan. The US-backed Iraqi campaign launched in October to liberate Mosul from the clutches of the Islamic State is on its last legs, although the Obama administration and Iraqi Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi are making every effort to disguise the debacle. As DEBKAfile has been reporting for three weeks, the Iraqi army's Mosul operation has run aground, despite solid US military backing, giving the advantage to Islamic State fighters occupying Iraq's biggest city since the summer of 2015.
The jihadists staunched the Iraqi army's advance by releasing in its path hundreds of suicide killers in waves on foot and in bomb cars. This tactic has inflicted crippling losses on the two elite Iraqi divisions leading the offensive, the Golden Division, which is the backbone of Iraq's Special Operations forces, and the 9th Armored Division. Devastating losses forced both to pull back from the battlefield. Western military observers noted Saturday, Dec. 31, that more and more American troops are to be seen on the embattled city� front lines. US combatants are therefore fighting face to face with ISIS jihadists, a development the Obama administration is loath to admit, never having released the number of American lives lost in the Mosul offensive. Our military sources add that the Iraqi counter-terrorism force sent to Mosul was previously posted in Baghdad to secure the capital against Islamist terrorist operations and ISIS attempts to seize the center and Iraqi's national government centers. Its transfer to Mosul, 356km to the north, exposed central Baghdad to terror. And, inevitably, on Saturday, two suicide bombers blew themselves up on a main street of the capital, killing 28 people and injuring 40 in their first major attack there in three months since the onset of the Mosul offensive.
DEBKA FILE
US and Iraqi military reinforcements were rushed this week to the crumbling Mosul front line to prop up the few positions still held by the Iraqi army and prevent the US-backed offensive from crashing into defeat at ISIS hands. The Islamists took advantage of the transfer of Iraqi troops to Mosul for their first major terrorist attack in central Mosul in three months, killing 28 people and injuring 40, as well as declaring war on Jordan. The US-backed Iraqi campaign launched in October to liberate Mosul from the clutches of the Islamic State is on its last legs, although the Obama administration and Iraqi Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi are making every effort to disguise the debacle. As DEBKAfile has been reporting for three weeks, the Iraqi army's Mosul operation has run aground, despite solid US military backing, giving the advantage to Islamic State fighters occupying Iraq's biggest city since the summer of 2015.
The jihadists staunched the Iraqi army's advance by releasing in its path hundreds of suicide killers in waves on foot and in bomb cars. This tactic has inflicted crippling losses on the two elite Iraqi divisions leading the offensive, the Golden Division, which is the backbone of Iraq's Special Operations forces, and the 9th Armored Division. Devastating losses forced both to pull back from the battlefield. Western military observers noted Saturday, Dec. 31, that more and more American troops are to be seen on the embattled city� front lines. US combatants are therefore fighting face to face with ISIS jihadists, a development the Obama administration is loath to admit, never having released the number of American lives lost in the Mosul offensive. Our military sources add that the Iraqi counter-terrorism force sent to Mosul was previously posted in Baghdad to secure the capital against Islamist terrorist operations and ISIS attempts to seize the center and Iraqi's national government centers. Its transfer to Mosul, 356km to the north, exposed central Baghdad to terror. And, inevitably, on Saturday, two suicide bombers blew themselves up on a main street of the capital, killing 28 people and injuring 40 in their first major attack there in three months since the onset of the Mosul offensive.
DEBKA FILE