Iraqi police ‘ready’ to join east Mosul assault

Several thousand Iraqi federal police are ready to join the assault against Daesh in east Mosul, a spokesman said on Monday, reinforcing troops who have faced weeks of fierce counter-attacks from the militants.
The extra forces are being deployed as the grueling US-backed campaign to crush Daesh in its Iraqi stronghold enters its ninth week. Elite army troops have retaken a quarter of the city, but their advance has been slow and punishing.
The federal police units, around 4,000 strong, have been moved to an area southeast of the city, near where an army tank division last week made the deepest incursion into Mosul so far, briefly seizing a hospital used as a base by the militants.
The troops were forced to pull back from the Salam hospital, a kilometer from the Tigris river which runs through the center of Mosul, when they were attacked by suicide car bombs, mortar volleys and machine gun fire. A spokesman for Iraq’s federal police, Lt. General Raed Shakir Jawdat, said the police units were near Qaraqosh, about 15 km from the southeast edge of Mosul, and were ready to mobilize.
Meanwhile, the families of civilians killed in October when an aircraft apparently mistakenly struck a place of worship in northern Iraq said on Monday they were suing top officials.
The relatives of the victims of the Oct. 21 airstrike in the town of Daquq told reporters they were filing suit against Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi, the Defense Ministry and the head of the air force.
“Several families and lawyers of the victims of the Khani husseiniyah (a Shiite place of worship) affected by the aerial bombing are filing class action,” Haider Ahmed Al-Daquqi, one of the relatives, said.

Source: Arab News