Tri-Service
Battle For Mosul: The British Involvement
British forces are playing a key part in the battle for Mosul.
RAF jets have been striking so-called Islamic State positions around the city of months, while on the ground the British Army has been heavily involved in training both Iraqi and Kurdish troops.
It's a battle that the troops have known was coming for a while - see Forces TV's filming of the Kurdish Peshmerga being trained by members of 1 RIFLES in Northern Iraq earlier this year.
The 550 military trainers that the UK has in Iraq have in the past two years trained 18,000 government and Kurdish troops, according to the MoD.
The painful lessons of Afghanistan mean UK troops are now experts in counter-IED training, who can therefore pass on valuable skills to the Peshmerga as they move towards Mosul.
Since June Tornados and Typhoons based at Akrotiri in Cyprus, as well as unmanned RAF Reaper drones, have launched more than 200 airstrikes on IS positions around Mosul.
The city fell to Daesh in June 2014, and retaking it is likely to be difficult and potentially bloody, but the officer in charge of the RAF’s mission is confident IS will be defeated.
"We knew this was coming. "We will outpace, we will outmatch and we will outpunch Daesh in Mosul. It will be difficult but we can adapt quicker than they can adapt and we have the ability to bring things to bear upon Daesh that they cannot bring to bear upon us." - Air Cdre Sammy Sampson, speaking last month
Two years on since the start of Op Shader the UK’s contribution to the war on IS remains second only to America.
The liberation of the place where Al-Baghdadi declared the Islamic State Caliphate, meanwhile, will be a symbolic blow to the terror group.
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