A
woman holds a young injured girl as Iraqi forces continue their advance
against Islamic State militants in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq, Monday,
July 3, 2017.
MOSUL,
Iraq (AP) — The Islamic State group is striking back as Iraqi forces
are on the cusp of full victory
in Mosul, sending women suicide bombers
to target soldiers as the battle for the country's second-largest city
nears its end. At least 15 people were killed in the latest assaults
across Iraq, officials said Monday.
The
attacks underscore the intense violence still plaguing the battered
nation and the perils that will remain even after IS militants are
pushed out of Mosul.
On
Monday morning in Mosul's Old City neighborhood — the scene of IS' last
stand, where soldiers are fast closing in on the last remaining pocket
of militants — two women suicide bombers, hiding among a group of
fleeing civilians, targeted Iraqi troops, killing one soldier and
wounding several others.
And
at a camp for displaced people in Iraq's western Anbar province, a
suicide bomber dressed in a woman's all-covering robe killed 14 on
Sunday evening, a provincial official said.
After
days of fierce battles, the militant-held territory in Mosul is rapidly
shrinking, with IS now controlling just over 1 square kilometer in all,
or about 0.40 square miles.
Using
women as suicide bombers is apparently the latest tactic by the
militants, Sgt. Ali Abdullah Hussein told The Associated Press as he
returned from the front line, his troops carrying the body of their
slain comrade wrapped in a blanket.
"They appeared from the basement (of a building) and they blew themselves up," Hussein said of the two women bombers.
The attack happened in the area of the destroyed al-Nuri Mosque, which was the focus of the Iraqi forces' push last week.
Over
the past three days, Hussein said at least four such attacks have
targeted Iraqi forces as hundreds of Mosul's civilians are fleeing the
battles in the Old City's congested streets.
After
the explosion on Monday, another group of civilians appeared on the
main road, prompting the Iraqi soldiers to immediately draw their
weapons. They then yelled to the group of mostly women and children to
back away and take another route out.
IS
overran Mosul in a matter of days more than three years ago. The
U.S.-backed offensive to retake the city was launched last October and
has lasted nearly nine months, although Iraqi political and military
officials had vowed that victory would be declared by the end of 2016.
Iraqi
forces launched the operation to retake the Old City in mid-June and
after a dawn push last Thursday, they retook the area around the al-Nuri
Mosque, which the militants had blown up just a few days earlier.
The
12th century mosque is hugely symbolic — it was from a pulpit of this
mosque that IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed the IS caliphate
in July 2014.
After
the Iraqi forces retook the landmark al-Nuri Mosque, Prime Minister
Haider al-Abadi declared an end to IS' so-called caliphate and pledged
victory was "near."
The
suicide bombing in Anbar took place at dusk on Sunday, as authorities
were accommodating families that had fled from the Islamic State-held
town of Qaim, in western Iraq, according to Councilman Taha Abdul-Ghani.
Abdul-Ghani said a police colonel was among the 14 dead, and at least 20 were wounded in the explosion.
The
death toll could have been higher, Abdul Ghani said, but the colonel
had become suspicious about the person in the long robe and walked up to
the attacker, embracing him — presumably to reduce the number of
casualties — as he detonated his explosives.
Iraqi
forces have pushed IS out of most of Anbar, and though there was no
immediate claim of responsibility for the camp attack, it had all the
hallmarks of IS, which has in the past months staged large-scale attacks
elsewhere in Iraq to distract from its losses in Mosul.
___
Associated Press writer Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad contributed to this report.
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