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Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi

BAGHDAD. – The United Nations said yesterday it is “racing against the clock” to prepare emergency aid for hundreds of thousands of endangered civilians in Mosul with an Iraqi army offensive looming to oust Islamic State from the western half of the city.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi confirmed yesterday that government forces had taken complete control of eastern Mosul, 100 days after the start of the US-backed campaign to retake Iraq’s second largest city from Islamic State (IS) insurgents who seized it in 2014.

UN officials estimate 750,000 people remain in Mosul west of the Tigris River that flows through the last remaining major urban centre held by Islamic State in Iraq, after a series of government counter-offensives in the country’s north and west.

The west side could prove more complicated to take than the east as it is criss-crossed by streets too narrow for armored vehicles, allowing militants to hide among civilians.

The Sunni Muslim jihadists are expected to put up a fierce fight as they are cornered in a shrinking area of Mosul.

“We are racing against the clock to prepare for this,” UN humanitarian coordinator Lise Grande told Reuters. Humanitarian agencies were setting up displaced people camps accessible from western Mosul and pre-positioning supplies in them, she said.

“The reports from inside western Mosul are distressing,” she said in a separate statement. “Prices of basic food and supplies are soaring . . . Many families without income are eating only once a day. Others are being forced to burn furniture to stay warm.”

Government forces on Tuesday finished clearing the last eastern pocket held by militants – the northern suburb of Rashidiya, Major General Najm al-Jubbouri, commander of the northern front, told the local Mosuliya TV channel.

Abadi “announces the total liberation of the west side of Mosul”, state television reported.

New US President Donald Trump’s administration has sent messages offering to increase the level of assistance to Iraq, Iraqi state television quoted Abadi as saying. Trump has made the fight against Islamic State a foreign policy priority.

It was from Mosul’s Grand Mosque, on the western side, that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a “caliphate” under his rule in 2014, spanning large tracts of Iraq and Syria.

Mosul has been the largest city under IS control in either country, with a pre-war population of about two million.

A U.S.-led coalition is providing air and ground support to Iraqi forces in the battle that began on Oct. 17, the biggest in Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003.

More than 100,000 Iraqi troops, members of regional Kurdish security forces and Shi’ite Muslim paramilitaries known as Popular Mobilisation are participating in the offensive. – Reuters.