U.S. Forces Ready to Retake ISIS ‘Capital’ City of Raqqa

United States Defense Secretary Ash Carter released a statement on Wednesday that it would launch an all-out offensive to retake the city of Raqqa.

At a NATO meeting in Brussels, Carter told reporters that troops are now being mobilized for the siege of Raqqa that would take place in the next couple of weeks; he declined to give more specifics about the attack.

“The plan has us generating those forces in a matter of weeks … generating them and positioning them for the isolation of Raqqa,” Carter said.

Earlier this month, the U.S. backed the attack on Mosul. It has been “long planned” that the attack on Raqqa would be next, Carter added.

Ready to Attack

The assault preparation comes amid fears that the terror group would plot an attack somewhere in the world from inside of the city.

U.S. Commander in Iraq, Gen. Stephen Townsend, told reporters that it is “imperative to get isolation in place around Raqqa,” he added, “there are significant external operations attack planning” taking place inside the city.

“We actually aren’t sure how pressing it is, and that’s what’s worrying,” Gen. Townsend added, “We know they are up to something, and it’s an external plot. We don’t know exactly where; we don’t know exactly when.”

Secretary Ash Carter said the military has enough resources to launch the operation in both Mosul and Raqqa.

“We’re going to win this, and so if there’s anything we need to do to accelerate, I’m prepared to ask for it,” he said.

Secretary Carter and his NATO counterparts shared the same insight and committed that anti-ISIS operations would be its major focus.

The transatlantic alliance committed to increasing its participation and launch aerial surveillance flights in the Black Sea Region.

NATO has been training Iraqi military officers in Jordan as it avoids direct involvement in the anti-ISIS fight, leaving the decision to its members to be involved in the U.S. led coalition.

NATO’s commitment for Peace

NATO spokesperson Dylan White said on Tuesday, “We will improve the coalition’s overall air picture by providing surveillance and situational awareness, thereby making the skies safer,”

“This is a meaningful contribution to the (anti-ISIS) effort and a clear signal of NATO’s determination to help fight terrorism,” he added.

NATO showed its determination despite the recent criticism made by Presidential nominee Donald Trump.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, “NATO has played a key role, has been in a front line in a fight against terrorism for many, many years with our operation in Afghanistan, training Iraqi officers supporting Tunisia, Jordan and many other ways.”
“As I stated many times, the adaptation of NATO — where you focus more on intelligence, where you step up of our efforts to fight terrorism, where we increase defense spending — is not related to (the) US election campaign,” he added.

Other than anti-ISIS operations in Syria and Iraq, NATO also focuses on Russia’s recent aggression in Eastern Europe.

Secretary Carter said that the U.S. will deploy rotations of U.S.-based armored brigade combat teams to Europe early next year to strengthen deterrence in the region

 

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Kurds Begin Large-Scale Assault in Mosul

As an assault to drive out so-called Islami State militants from Mosul continues, Kurdish fighters say they have started a large-scale operation north and east of the Iraqi city.

The Kurds say the plan is to tighten the noose around the militant’s last key stronghold in Iraq.

The Special Forces have now joined the offensive as the Iraqi army has been moving from the south.

The US military says there are indications that IS leaders have fled Mosul.

Nevertheless, there are an estimated 5,000 IS fighters still in the city.

The Kurdish Peshmerga forces said their campaign was on three fronts. They also followed recent advances by both the Kurds and the Iraqi security forces in the area.

The statement said that the intentions are to clear some of the nearby villages. This action will give them control of strategic sites to further constrain ISIL’s (IS) movements.

Meanwhile, Iraqi special forces joined the assault on Thursday, Iraqi Major General Maan al-Saadi said. They made a pre-dawn advance on the nearby town of Bartalla.

The special forces were backed by air strikes performed by a US-led coalition.

General Gary Volesky said earlier that they’ve seen movement out of Mosul and that they got signs that leaders have left. The American general, however, did not specify who had fled, nor did he state where they had gone.

The whereabouts of ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi are not known. Some accounts say he is in Mosul while others say he has escaped the northern Iraqi city.

BBC Middle East analyst Alan Johnston says it is likely that any fighters leaving the city had simply been heading to the front line areas, which still lie beyond the outskirts.

Nobody has any reservations that a die-hard IS militant would stay in the city and fight for it, the correspondent adds.

General Volesky said that foreign fighters are expected to form the bulk of the force who will hold out. The general heads the land component of the US-led coalition battling IS.

Save the Children charity asserts that 5,000 people from the conflict zone have fled to a refugee camp over the Syrian border in the last 10 days. There are 1,000 more waiting at the border.

UN camps ready to receive in excess of 200,000 Mosul refugees

Refugee camps are being set up in the south, north and east of Mosul in provision for an inflow of people fleeing the city. The UN says it anticipates more than 200,000 in the coming days and weeks.

An estimated 1.5 million civilians are believed to still be in Mosul. Those inside reported that IS was stopping them from departing the city and that they were running out of basic necessities.

Mosul has been under IS control since 2014. It is the militant group’s last major Iraqi stronghold.

The attack to retake the city started on Monday as the advancing forces seized several villages on the city’s borders ahead of a final push.

However, with IS fighters seeming to be putting up unyielding resistance in places, progress is expected to be slow.

There are also threats that the group could use chemical weapons or human shields.

With these challenges, it could be months before the city is liberated.

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US Anticipates Use of Chemical Weapons by Islamic State in Mosul Conflict

As the Islamic State tries to fend off an Iraqi-led assault on the city of Mosul, the United States anticipates Islamic State to utilize crude chemical weapons, US officials say. Though they added that the group’s technical ability to create such weapons is extremely limited.

One official said that the US is wary of the militant group given their use of a mustard agent in the months preceding Monday’s commencement of the Mosul offensive. Consequently, US forces have started to consistently collect shell fragments to test for potential chemical agents.

A second official said that in a formerly undisclosed incident, US forces verified the existence of sulfur mustard agent on Islamic State munition fragments on October 5.

The attack was aimed at local forces, not coalition or US troops.

US officials believe that conventional weapons are still the most serious risk for attacking Kurdish and Iraqi troops. They don’t think Islamic State has been effective so far at developing chemical weapons with specifically fatal results.

Sulfur mustard agent causes exposed skin and lungs to swell up. However, that would not be fatal at low doses.

Close to 5,000 US forces are in Iraq. At least 100 of them are inserted with Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces involved with the Mosul offensive. They are assigned in an advisory role counseling commanders. The advisers also help ensure coalition air-power hits the appropriate targets, officials said. They added that those forces are not at the frontlines.

The collapse of Mosul would signify the fall of the ultra-hardline Sunni jihadists in Iraq. On the other hand, this could also lead to sectarian bloodletting and land grabs between factions that fought each other following the downfall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

One million potential humans shields for IS

US President Barack Obama appraised on Thursday that around 1 million civilians were still in Mosul. This creates a challenge for Iraq and its Western allies attempting to drive out the group through force.

Thomas Weiss, the Iraq chief of the International Organization for Migration, said on Tuesday he expected Islamic State forces to use Mosul residents as human shields. He also voiced out his concerns about the risks of chemical agents.

Weiss added that the IOM had not managed to secure many gas masks yet.

The allied assault could lead to a complicated, prolonged battle, as attacking Iraqi forces remain 12 to 30 miles from the city itself. US officials believe that ISIL is most likely to use chemical weapons later in the campaign.

The leader of Islamic State was reported to be among thousands of fanatical militants still in the city. This suggests the group would go all out to hold off the coalition.

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Another Apartment Stormed in Germany in Hunt For Refugee Planning Bomb Attack

Police commandos held a man in connection with a hunt for a Syrian refugee believed of plotting a bomb attack. They assaulted his apartment in the eastern city of Chemnitz on Sunday.

Saxony state criminal investigation office spokesman Tom Berhardt said that there were no casualties and no shots were fired during the incident. They’ve taken the man into custody and are questioning him now.

In another apartment the police stormed in the city on Saturday, they found explosives but lost track of Jaber Albakr, the 22-year-old suspect. He slipped through their hold after police spotted him at the door of the apartment block.

The quantity of explosive discovered suggests that the person was preparing to carry out an Islamist-motivated attack, a Federal Prosecutor’s Office spokesman said.

The apartment the police raided on Saturday yielded several hundred grams of explosives.

Unpopular policy

This development is unwelcome news for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her open-door migrants policy has caused her conservatives to lose support to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Merkel said last month that she wished she could turn back time by several years. She wanted to better plan for last year’s inflow of close to one million refugees. The leader has yet to declare if she will pursue a fourth term as chancellor in next year’s election.

Islamic State claimed responsibility in July for attacks at a music festival in Ansbach and on a train near Wuerzburg.

Albakr is still at large with hundreds of police officers trying to track him down.

The government officially recognized Albakr as a refugee after he entered Germany last year. The police did not previously know him when they raided the first apartment after a tip-off from the domestic intelligence service.

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