(10 Jul 2017) Iraqi forces were still battling Islamic State militants in a small area of Mosul on Monday, a day after the prime minister visited to congratulate the troops on retaking nearly all of Iraq's second largest city.
Drone footage from Mosul's Old City showed widespread devastation, with buildings reduced to rubble, smoke from occasional airstrikes rising into the sky.
Brigadier General Haider Fadhil of the Iraqi special forces said that even after the militants are defeated in the last pocket under their control, Iraqi forces will need to carry out clearing operations to root out sleeper cells and defuse booby traps.
Iraqi commanders say they believe hundreds of IS fighters remain inside the neighbourhood and are using their families — including women and children — as human shields in a fight to the death that has slowed recent Iraqi gains to a crawl.
Mosul fell to the Islamic State group in 2014, when IS blitzed across much of northwestern Iraq and subsequently declared a caliphate on the territory held by extremists in Iraq and Syria.
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