Mosul Liberation: How We Got Here

Cover picture credits to Kainoa Little

Three years after Mosul's fall to jihadists, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi visited soldiers on the ground to congratulate them for the hard fought battle.

Iraqi forces are pushing to retake the last patch of ground in Mosul where Islamic State militants are holding on to a tiny sliver of the Old City.

Brigadier General Haider Fadhil says his men, closely backed by US-led coalition airstrikes, are continuing to advance and clear territory in the Old City.

Iraqi commanders say they believe hundreds of IS fighters remain inside the neighbourhood and are using their families - including women and children - as human shields.

IS seized Iraq’s second city in June 2014, and it was in Mosul’s Grand Mosque that Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi – the self-styled leader of IS – declared a Caliphate. 

Iraqi forces launched the operation to retake Mosul last October and began the weeks-long push through the Old City district in June. 

Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, commander of the coalition, has described it as "the toughest and most brutal close-quarters combat that I have experienced in my 34 years of service".

The UK's mission to eliminate Daesh began in September 2014, after MPs overwhelmingly voted in favour of airstrikes against the terrorist organisation.

The ground offensive in Mosul is being supported from the air by coalition aircraft, including RAF Tornados and Typhoons based in Cyprus, and unmanned Reaper drones flying from a base in the Middle East. 

The RAF is second only to the US in the air campaign, supporting the advance and carrying out daily airstrikes. 

In 2015, Forces News was allowed special access to Operation Shader, both on the ground and in the skies, at RAF Akrotiri:

Even though the British Army isn't involved in a combat role in Iraq, they have been training and providing equipment to Iraqi Security Forces and Kurdish Security Forces.

According to the MOD, they have trained more than 25,000 Iraqi forces - including over 6,600 Kurdish Peshmerga - in infantry and weapons maintenance, medical and engineering skills.

The painful lessons of Afghanistan mean UK troops are now experts in counter-IED training, so they could pass on valuable skills to the Peshmerga.

In August 2016, Forces News was invited to see the training being conducted by troops from 1 RIFLES and other British Army units: