Iraqi forces launch attack on Mosul’s Old City

Iraqi forces have launched an attack on Mosul’s Old City, the last district held by the Islamic State militant group.

Special forces are advancing on the district from the west and federal police are on the southern front, a military statement said.

“This is the last chapter” in the offensive to take Mosul, said Lieutenant General Abdul Ghani al-Asadi, the commander of the Counter Terrorism Service elite units.

The historic district is the last still under control of IS in the city, which used to be their capital in Iraq. It is a densely-populated maze of narrow alleyways where fighting is often done house by house.

The UN estimates that as many as 100,000 civilians are trapped in the city, with little food, water and medicine and limited access to hospitals.

The US-backed Iraqi offensive to capture Mosul entered its ninth month on Saturday. The UN said that about 230 civilians have been killed in western Mosul in the past two weeks, some in air strikes and rocket attacks, and others shot dead by IS snipers as they tried to flee on foot or by boat across the Tigris River.

The fall of Mosul would, in effect, mark the end of the Iraqi half of the "caliphate" that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared in a speech from an historic mosque in the Old City in 2014, covering parts of Iraq and Syria.