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Reuters
ERBIL
The declining effectiveness of Islamic State attacks against Iraqi forces in eastern Mosul suggests the militants are starting to run out of resources with the campaign in its third month, a US general told Reuters.
Since the US-backed offensive began on October 17, elite troops have retaken a quarter of the city in the biggest ground operation in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said the group will be driven out of the country by April.
The second phase of the campaign, launched last week following nearly a month of deadlock, has pushed Islamic State out of several more areas in eastern Mosul despite fierce resistance. Iraqi forces have yet to enter the west.
"They've got a finite amount of resource that are on the eastern side and the fact that their capability is waning indicates that those resources are starting to dwindle," US Army Major General Joseph Martin, head of ground forces for the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State, told Reuters on Sunday.
"I see the commanders' reporting coming in and I see the exquisiteness of their SVBIED (suicide vehicle borne improvised explosive device) system, the sophistication of their SVBIEDs continuing to get lower and lower, the boom of the different IEDs continuing to have a lower yield - all tell me that the enemy's capacity is diminishing over time. We see that as a positive indicator," he said in a phone interview from Baghdad.
Daily suicide attacks and roadside bombs, along with snipers and mortars, have been the most lethal Islamic State tactics in resisting the 100,000-strong Iraqi force.
Despite being pushed back in Mosul, the militants have continued to launch deadly bomb attacks in other parts of the country, including at least twice in the heavily fortified capital Baghdad over the past three days.
An arms monitoring group said last month that the militants had been producing weapons on a scale and sophistication that matched national military forces and had standardised production. The technical precision of their work means it could not be described as"improvised" weapons production, it said in a report.
Martin, who took up his post in mid-November, said it was difficult to know how much ordnance Islamic State has stockpiled in Mosul.
"They've had two years to prepare for this defence and so I don't know how much stuff they have stored inside mosques, inside of schools, inside of hospitals," he said.
