U.S. Says it Has Shifted Strategy in Fight Against ISIS
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says new goal is to kill militants in Syria and Iraq rather than force them to flee
The U.S. has switched to “annihilation tactics” against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, surrounding fighters instead of moving them from one spot to another, the defense secretary said Sunday.
“Our strategy right now is to accelerate the campaign against ISIS. It is a threat to all civilized nations. And the bottom line is we are going to move in an accelerated and reinforced manner, throw them on their back foot,” Jim Mattis said on CBS News ’s “Face the Nation.”
Iraqi forces have launched an offensive to reclaim the last districts of Mosul still under Islamic State control, considered the most difficult stage of this battle against the militants now in its eighth month.
Army, police and elite counterterrorism units began the assault on the edges of western Mosul’s Old City before dawn on Saturday, backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and artillery. Explosions from the strikes were heard starting from about 3 a.m. and continued into the afternoon.
“Our main mission is to liberate people before land,” Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, a spokesman for Iraq’s military, said on Saturday.
Mosul was the largest city Islamic State controlled in Iraq and the Old City is home to the ancient Grand Nouri Mosque. The mosque was where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made his only publicly recorded appearance, announcing the creation of a caliphate, or religious empire, in July 2014.
With the entire city encircled by Iraqi forces, U.S. and Iraqi commanders are expecting militants to put up fierce resistance in the last remaining patch of the city they occupy.
“Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home to North Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa,” Mr. Mattis said Sunday. “We’re not going to allow them to do so. We’re going to stop them there.”
Iraq’s military said recently that Islamic State controls less than 10% of western Mosul and has fortified it with booby traps in buildings and explosives along the Old City’s narrow roads.
Iraqi troops will have to conduct the final battles on foot, foregoing armored vehicles that are too large for the streets and alleys in the area, which is still packed with some 200,000 civilians.
The United Nations is also bracing for the fight, which it expects will send most of those 200,000 people still living in the Old City fleeing for already overcrowded camps. On Friday, the U.N. said those remaining behind Islamic State lines lack clean water, medicine and food, and have been herded by the militants into explosive-laden houses to be used as human shields.
Islamic State snipers have deliberately targeted children, said Stephen O’Brien, the top U.N. humanitarian affairs official.
“International law is unambiguous,” Mr. O’Brien said. “The protection of civilian lives is a legal and moral duty that stands above all other objectives.”
Islamic State’s use of human shields and the pace of U.S. airstrikes have had devastating consequences in the fight for western Mosul.
On Thursday, the Pentagon said a U.S. military investigation concluded that 101 civilians were killed by a March 17 U.S. airstrike on a house that triggered secondary blasts of explosives placed by militants. The collapse of the building, where the civilians were sheltering, also left 36 people still missing.
Iraq’s military said Friday that it has been dropping leaflets on the Old City, instructing residents there to flee toward security forces who are prepared to transport them to safe locations and camps in anticipation of the tough fight. U.S. commanders say the fight for Mosul has seen the most intense urban combat since World War II.