Eastern Mosul ‘fully liberated’ from Daesh: Iraqi army

By Ali Jawad, Ahmed Qassem and Sarhad Shakir

BAGHDAD/NIVEVEH, Iraq (AA) - Iraqi forces have "fully liberated" eastern Mosul from the Daesh terrorist group, Iraq’s army-affiliated counter-terrorism forces announced Wednesday.

"Our forces have established total control over eastern Mosul," Lieutenant-General Talib Shaghati, a top commander of the army’s counter-terrorism forces, said at a televised press conference held in the war-battered city.

"During recent operations in the area, we defused and dismantled 300 explosive-laden vehicles," he said.

"Daesh threw numerous suicide bombers at us to hinder our advance but our forces overcame them in battle," Shaghati asserted.

Despite the commander’s assertions, however, some parts of eastern Mosul remain under the terrorist group’s control, according to an Anadolu Agency correspondent in the area.

In a related development, at least 10 civilians were killed -- including women and children -- when Daesh terrorists fired rockets at recently-liberated districts of the city, Iraqi military sources told Anadolu Agency.

"Militants fired 80-millimeter mortar shells and Katyusha rockets from the banks of the Tigris at Mosul’s Al-Andalus, Al-Shorta and Al-Ziraie districts," Falah Nazim al-Abbasi, a brigadier-general in Iraq’s anti-terrorism agency, said.

The attack, he said, had killed several civilians, including three women and three children.