Civil Defense teams are still recovering bodies from the
rubble in west Mosul. A family of eight was discovered in a basement after
their house collapsed on top of them two weeks before. A girl was found after
she got trapped looking for her family. Two other families were uncovered in
their destroyed homes. The Mosul Morgue is still receiving
30-40 corpses a day. This will be a long and arduous operation as so much of
west Mosul was damaged in the fighting. An unknown amount of people died in the
process, and they have yet to be dug out.
During his Friday Sermon Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s
representative called
on the Iraqi forces to stop extra judicial killings and abuses of Islamic State
suspects. This came after four videos were posted on Facebook of soldiers and
police beating and then executing captured IS elements in the Old City of west
Mosul along with other similar stories. The Ayatollah has made statements like
this before, but to little effect. Abuses and murders routinely happen in every
military operation as acts of revenge against the militants. The public usually
welcomes them, and Baghdad has never been serious about stopping it.
Tensions between Hashd groups continued in
northeast Mosul. An argument escalated into a gunfight between the Ninewa
Guards and Kataib Sayid al-Shuhada in a Mosul neighborhood. The army was called
in to settle things and some Guards’ members were arrested. Sayid al-Shuhada
later issued a statement telling the Guards to leave the area or suffer
retaliation. Sayid al-Shuhada is not part of the security forces in Mosul, but
many Hashd groups have been moving in and out of the city, usually to set up
offices. This confrontation is a sign of the difficulties the city is having
with so many different armed groups under no unified command.
Finally, former Ninewa Governor Atheel Nujafi responded
to Vice President Nouri al-Maliki’s statements yesterday in an interview with
Sputnik News. Maliki in part blamed Nujafi for the fall of Mosul in 2014.
Nujafi shot back that it was Maliki who was responsible. Now that the battle
for the city is over more politicians and civil groups are discussing who was
behind the city’s collapse to the Islamic State, and whether anyone should be charged.
The Iraqi government rarely puts its own on trial. The elite will attack each
other however, which is what is happening now for probably the next year as
elections are scheduled for 2018.
SOURCES
Associated Press, “Iraqis arrest 26 foreigners in Mosul; 16
women,” 7/22/17
Baghdad Post, “Sistani calls for ‘punishing justice’ ISIS
captives,” 7/22/17
- “Victory floating bridge set to link western, eastern
banks of Mosul,” 7/22/17
Bas News, “5 Captives in IS Secret Jail in Nineveh
Released,” 7/22/17
- “Conflicts Between Shi’ite, Sunni Militias in Mosul on the
Rise,” 7/22/17
Cockburn, Patrick, “The world’s lack of outrage over tens of
thousands of civilian deaths in Mosul is shameful,” Independent, 7/21/17
Coles,
Isabel, “Mosul morgue workers struggle to cope with ‘river of blood,’” Reuters,
7/21/17
Iraq News Network, “Nujafi: Maliki and his corrupt gang
behind the handover of Mosul,” 7/22/17
Al Mada, “Joint operations: We killed 30 thousand Daash in
Mosul,” 7/22/17
Mostafa, Nehal, “Seventeen IS female members killed, injured
as missile shot west of Mosul,” Iraqi News, 7/22/17
New Sabah, “Mosalites underestimate the importance of
checkpoints and call for intensified intelligence work,” 7/22/17
No comments:
Post a Comment