Iraq’s prime minister on Tuesday declared eastern Mosul “fully liberated” from Islamic State group militants after a day of fierce fighting and more than three months after a massive U.S.-backed operation to retake the city began.
Iraqi forces drove Islamic State militants from one of their last bastions in the eastern half of the city, while aid groups expressed concern for the estimated 750,000 people still in the militant-held west.
In his weekly news conference on Tuesday, Haider al-Abadi hailed the “unmatched heroism of all security forces factions” and public support for the operation.
Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and ISIS’s last urban stronghold in the country, fell into the hands of the extremists in the summer of 2014, when the group captured large swaths of northern and western Iraq.
Asked how long it will take to liberate the western side of the city, al-Abadi told the Associated Press: “I can’t tell now, but we are capable of doing so and we will do so.”
Hundreds of civilians fled from the northeastern Rashidiya neighborhood on foot as Iraqi helicopters circled overhead and fired on militants. At least two wounded Iraqi soldiers were brought back from the front lines after a suicide bombing.
A mortar attack in another neighborhood in eastern Mosul killed an Iraqi army colonel on Sunday, according to Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, a military spokesman.
The U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, Lise Grande, expressed concern for civilians in the western half of the city in a statement signed by 20 international and local aid groups. She said the cost of food and basic goods is soaring, water and electricity are intermittent and that some residents are forced to burn furniture to keep warm.
“We hope that everything is done to protect the hundreds of thousands of people who are across the river in the west,” Grande said in the statement. “We know that they are at extreme risk and we fear for their lives.”
The statement called on warring parties “to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law to protect civilians and ensure they have access to life-saving assistance.”
Mosul is the ISIS group’s last major urban bastion in Iraq. The extremists still control large areas in neighboring Syria.