Islamic State (Isis) militants probably killed more than 300 Iraqi former police three weeks ago and buried them in a mass grave which discovered last week near the town of Hammam al-Alil south of Mosul, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.
A Reuters reporter visited the site of the mass grave, where residents said the ultra-hardline militants buried victims who had been shot or beheaded. The residents said they believed up to 200 people were killed in the weeks before Isis withdrew from the town.
Human Rights Watch said some of the former policemen were separated from a group of about 2,000 people from nearby villages and towns who were forced to march alongside the militants last month as they retreated north to Mosul and the town of Tal Afar.
It quoted a labourer who said he saw Isis fighters drive four large trucks carrying a total of 100 to 125 men, some of whom he recognised as former policemen, past an agricultural college close to the site which was to become the mass grave.
Minutes later, he heard automatic gunfire and cries of distress, he said. The next night, on October 29th, a similar scene was repeated, with between 130 to 145 men, he told HRW.
Automatic gunfire
Another witness, a resident of Hammam al-Alil, said he heard automatic gunfire in the area for approximately seven minutes, three nights in a row.
“This is another piece of evidence of the horrific mass murder by Isis of former law enforcement officers in and around Mosul,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
“Isis should be held accountable for these crimes against humanity.”
The US-backed offensive to crush Isis in its last major city stronghold in Iraq entered a second month on Thursday as forces arrayed against the hardline Sunni group sought finally to seal off Mosul from all sides.
Isis militants have been steadily retreating from areas around Mosul into the city since the battle started on October 17th, with air and ground support from a US-led coalition.
An elite army unit, the Counter Terrorism Service, breached the city’s eastern limits for the first time two weeks ago. Other army units have yet to enter from the northern and the southern sides.
Another breakthrough came on Wednesday, when Iranian-backed militias announced the capture of an air base west of Mosul, part of their campaign to choke off the route between the Syrian and Iraqi parts of the caliphate Isis declared in 2014.
The capture of the Tal Afar base also offers the mainly Shia forces a launchpad for operations against Isis targets inside Syria, and highlights the potential for the Mosul operation to reshape strategic power across northern Iraq.
To the east of Mosul, Kurdish peshmerga forces are also taking territory well outside the traditional borders of their autonomous region.
The offensive to take Mosul, the largest city under Isis control in either Iraq or Syria, is turning into the biggest battle in Iraq’s turbulent history since the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Waves of counter-attacks
Iraqi authorities have declined to give a timeline for recapture of the whole city, but it is likely to last for months. The militants have launched waves of counter-attacks against advancing forces, tying them down in lethal urban combat in narrow streets still full of residents.
The city’s capture is seen as crucial towards dismantling the caliphate, and Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, believed to have withdrawn to a remote area near the Syrian border, has told his fighters there can be no retreat.
Iraqi military estimates put the number of Isis fighters in the city at 5,000 to 6,000. Facing them is a 100,000-strong coalition of Iraqi government forces, Kurdish fighters and Shia paramilitary units.
Iraqi authorities have not published a casualty toll for the campaign overall - either for security forces, civilians or Isis fighters. The warring sides claim to have inflicted thousands of casualties in enemy ranks.
Nearly 57,000 people have been displaced because of the fighting, moving from villages and towns around the city to government-held areas, according to UN estimates.
The figure does not include the thousands of people rounded up in villages around Mosul and forced to accompany Isis fighters to cover their retreat towards the city.
In some cases, men of fighting age were separated from those groups and summarily killed, according to residents and rights groups.
Government forces are still fighting in a dozen of about 50 neighbourhoods in the eastern part of Mosul, which is divided by the Tigris River.
The militants are dug in among civilians as a defence tactic to hamper air strikes, moving around the city through tunnels, driving suicide car bombs into advancing troops and hitting them with sniper and mortar fire.
The resilience of Isis defences has forced a greater involvement from the coalition made up mainly of western nations including Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Australia.
Canadians in combat
Canadian military trainers operating with Kurdish fighters have clashed several dozen times with Isis militants over the last month, defence officials said on Wednesday in Ottawa.
On three occasions, troops were forced to use anti-armour rockets to destroy suspected car bombs, said Maj Gen Michael Rouleau, commander of Canada’s special forces.
The revelation could be awkward for Canada’s Liberal government, which promised that the 200-strong training force would not take part in active combat.
Urban warfare
The US has also deployed Apache helicopters to support Iraqi troops engaged in urban warfare in eastern Mosul.
The forces taking part in the fighting have different and sometime conflicting agendas that could complicate the continuation of the battle or the stabilisation of the region of Mosul in future.
The Nineveh region surrounding Mosul is a mosaic of ethnic and religious communities - Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, Sunnis, Shias - though Sunni Arabs comprise the overwhelming majority.
The autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government suggested on Wednesday it would try to expand the area it rules in northern Iraq to include surrounding villages and towns captured by Kurdish fighters from Isis, and possibly the oil-rich region of Kirkuk.
Kurdish peshmerga forces “will not retreat from areas retaken” from Isis militants in Iraq, Kurdistan president Massoud Barzani said, according to Rudaw TV station.
Mr Barzani’s comment riled the central government in Baghdad, which opposes any plans to expand the Kurdish autonomous area.
Prime minister Haider al-Abadi’s office said there was agreement between the government and the Kurds that provides for their “withdrawal to the places they held before the start of the liberation operations”.
But it said the agreement did not cover territory taken by peshmerga fighters from Isis forces between 2014 and the start of the Mosul campaign last month, which includes the contested region of Kirkuk.
Reuters