Iraqi forces poised for final Tikrit assault

TIKRIT, Iraq: Iraqi commanders were plotting a strategy for flushing out the few remaining Islamic State group Jihadists from central Tikrit, a city one commander said Saturday would be liberated within three days.
The massively outnumbered IS fighters are completely boxed in but are protected by snipers and thousands of bombs they planted across the city.
That has slowed the progress of the broad alliance of forces battling IS, which is keen to minimise casualties on the way to what would be the biggest victory yet against the jihadists.
Karim al-Nuri, a top leader of the Badr militia and spokesman of the volunteer Popular Mobilisation units, said it would take no more than “72 hours” to liberate Tikrit from IS, which seized it last summer. The last defenders are holed up in the city centre and “surrounded from all sides”, Nuri said.
Speaking to AFP from the outskirts of Tikrit, near the village of Awja, he said “their number is now 60 to 70”.
An lieutenant colonel in the army’s elite counter-terrorism was more conservative about the battle’s evolution, saying “battles in cities are difficult for all armies.”
AFP reporters in a northern neighbourhood of Tikrit saw dozens of craters on a single street, caused by the explosion of bombs concealed underneath.
On a roof, a government marksman wearing a white headscarf and who gave his name as Haj Abu Maryam said that by noon, he had already killed two enemy snipers. There was no evidence of intense fighting on Saturday, after another day that saw IS pounded from above — with artillery, jets and gunships — but with the assault making little headway on the ground.
Troops, police, Popular Mobilisation units, militias and fighters eager to retake their own city launched a huge assault nearly two weeks ago.
They first cleared outlying areas in Salaheddin province, of which Tikrit is the capital, and broke the city’s defences on Wednesday.
Tikrit is the hometown of Saddam Hussein, the remnants of whose Baath party collaborated with IS when it swept across Iraq’s heartland nine months ago.
Baghdad has failed several times in bids to retake Tikrit, but this operation is on a different scale, with up to 30,000 men initially involved.
Military coordination was improved, the cooperation of some tribesmen secured and Iran is said to have played a key role in the operation’s planning and execution.
IS has countered every military loss lately by ramping up its propaganda war with ever more shocking acts, including a video of a boy apparently executing a prisoner, and the destruction of priceless archaeological heritage sites.
It has also tried to project the image of a still-growing, despite the fact that its footprint in Iraq — the home country of IS supremo and self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — has been shrinking steadily for months.
On Thursday, IS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani announced that a pledge of allegiance by Nigeria’s Jihadist group Boko Haram had been accepted.
Boko Haram has been suffering military setbacks of its own in recent weeks and the announcement came as no surprise.
“For both groups, the new linkage provides a much-needed propaganda victory at just the right moment,” said the Soufan Group intelligence consultancy.
“At this stage, the Islamic State will take any victory it can get,” it said.
Tikrit is seen by commanders as a key stepping stone on the way to reconquering IS’s northern hub of Mosul and the outcome of the battle seems in little doubt, but there is more at stake for the government than just territorial gain.
The vast operation is seen as test of Baghdad’s ability to instill discipline in the array of fighting forces involved in the war against IS.
Militias have been accused of serious crimes and abuses in reconquered areas.
In a report released late on Friday, Human Rights Watch said government and allied forces had also “engaged in deliberate destruction of civilian property” after retaking the Turkmen town of Amerli in September.