Iraqi forces fighting Islamic State set to storm Mosul airport

PanARMENIAN.Net - U.S.-backed Iraqi forces closing in on the Islamic State-held western half of Mosul prepared on Tuesday, February 22 to storm the airport and a nearby military base on its southern outskirts to create a bridgehead for a thrust into the city, Reuters reports.

Since ousting the militant group from eastern Mosul last month, Iraqi forces have advanced in sparsely populated outlying areas but fighting will intensify as they near the teeming inner city of western Mosul and the risk to roughly 750,000 civilians there will rise.

The U.S. military commander in Iraq has said he believes

U.S.-backed forces will retake both of IS's urban bastions - Mosul and Raqqa in neighbouring Syria - within the next six months, which would end the jihadists' ambitions to territorial rule three years after they declared a "caliphate".

Iraqi federal police and elite interior ministry units known as Rapid Response have made rapid progress towards western Mosul in a sweep from the south through stony desert terrain since launching the offensive's second phase on Sunday.

After fighting their way with helicopter gunships, machine gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades to Albu Saif on Monday, Iraqi forces were building up their positions in the hilltop village that overlooks the airport and built-up western Mosul beyond, a Reuters correspondent reported from the area.

The corpse of an Islamic State insurgent with a missing leg lay in the street of Albu Saif village.

Iraqi forces reached the "vicinity" of Mosul's international airport on Monday, the military said. A Rapid Response spokesman said the airport, once retaken, would be a close-support base for the onslaught into the west of Iraq's second-largest city.

Iraqi forces will also need to secure the Gozhlani military complex, which includes barracks and training grounds and sprawls across the area between the airport and the end of the Baghdad-Mosul highway.