Iraqi forces started new offensive in Mosul

Iraqi forces opened a front in western Mosul on Thursday in a major shift intended to accelerate an operation that had slowed to a crawl, leaving hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped on an urban battlefield.

The attack began early Thursday as the Ninth Iraqi Army Division and Interior Ministry troops who had been pulled from another combat assignment started pushing into Mosul from the north, according to an Iraqi military statement.

Iraq’s Counterterrorism Service has been clawing its way from the south, and the goal of the new operation is to force the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, to fight in multiple directions and collapse its defenses.

Hinting at the change of strategy, Lt. Gen. Othman al-Ghanmi, the chief of staff of the Iraqi Army, recently told a state-run newspaper that the battle for Mosul, now in its seventh month, would be won “in a maximum of three weeks.”

Still, the Iraqi forces face hundreds of terrorists who appear determined to fight to the end in neighborhoods still teeming with hungry and increasingly desperate civilians.

The new operation will also require careful synchronization among the Iraqi Army, Interior Ministry troops and the Counterterrorism Service, which report to different authorities in Baghdad and sometimes seem to be fighting separate wars.