BAGHDAD: The battle to retake Mosul, Iraq’s largest jihadist hub, could take up to a year to plan, US President Barack Obama’s envoy for the coalition against the Islamic State group said yesterday.
“I would see that Mosul will probably go as an operation within a year... The operation will kick off within a year,” John Allen told reporters in Baghdad. The northwestern city is Iraq’s second largest. IS seized it on June 10 and it has since used it as a headquarters and a base from which to launch further offensives.
Meanwhile, Syrian Kurds issued a desperate call for western powers and their own kin to rally to the defence of the city of Kobani, which appeared closer than ever to falling last night in the face of a sustained barrage from Islamic State militants.
The city, one of the largest Kurdish bastions of resistance to Isis in northern Syria, was shaken by shelling from the advancing militants at dusk, sending plumes of smoke skywards and more refugees scrambling across the border into Turkey. IS fighters are believed to be inside the eastern part of the city now, where some of the heaviest clashes are reverberating.
“This is one of the strongest days of fighting we have seen,” said Ismet Sheikh Hasan, a commander with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) defending Kobani. “Isis is thinking that tomorrow is a very important day, Eid, so they took their tanks and members of Isis from Aleppo, from Raqqa, from other cities nearby in order to conquer the mosque of Kobani.”
Hasan reiterated calls for international support for the city, but said they have so far fallen on deaf ears. “We haven’t had any contact from the Turkish army up until now, and no help from the international forces either,” he told the Guardian.
Aircraft from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates joined US warplanes in a new wave of bombing raids yesterday against Islamic State jihadists in Syria.
Coalition fighter jets and robotic drone planes conducted six strikes in Syria on Thursday and yesterday, hitting militant tanks, oil refineries and a training camp, the US military said.Agencies
