Story highlights
Kurdish TV journalist is killed in a bomb attack as she reports on clashes in Mosul
Residents are trying to escape the fighting as Iraqi forces advance on western Mosul
More than 50 civilians have been killed or injured by landmines since Friday night as they fled a village about 9 miles west of Mosul, Iraq’s Federal Police said in a tweet Saturday.
Residents in the village of Sahaji were trying to escape the fighting as Iraqi forces advance on western Mosul.
ISIS is in control of hills between Sahaji and Mosul, Iraq’s second city.
Taking western Mosul from ISIS: 5 key questions
Iraqi Federal Police units have gained more ground as they lead the charge to force ISIS from western Mosul, Lt. Gen. Raid Shakir Jaudat said Saturday.
Police including rapid response forces have liberated the Hawi al-Jawsaq area, an open agricultural expanse, and are now advancing into al-Jawsaq neighborhood, which sits next to the Tigris River.
East and west Mosul are divided by the Tigris, and US-led coalition airstrikes have damaged all five bridges connecting the two sides in an effort to contain the militants in the west.
Mosul: Iraqi-led forces push into key city
Federal Police elite units are also clearing the remaining pockets of resistance in western Mosul’s al-Tayaran neighborhood, just north of the Mosul International Airport runway. Iraqi forces seized control of the airport overnight Thursday.
Resistance from ISIS fighters continues. Residents in Mosul’s southwestern al-Jawsaq and Dawasa neighborhoods told CNN late Friday night that ISIS militants were setting fire to shops there as they battled Iraqi forces.
Residents and federal police officials said ISIS fighters had rounded up civilians in al-Jawsaq and surrounding areas, and forced them deeper into Mosul. The terror group is known for using civilians as human shields.
Eyewitnesses also described ISIS fighters seizing civilian vehicles, a pattern of the group in the battle for Mosul. The fighters took smaller vehicles to block roads against advancing Iraqi forces, while using larger SUV-type ones for themselves, residents said.
Reporter killed
Private Kurdish TV channel Rudaw said one of its top reporters, Shifa Gardi, was killed Saturday afternoon in a bomb attack while covering clashes in Mosul. Her cameraman, Younis Mustafa, was also injured, the channel said in a statement.
Bayan Sami Rahman, the Kurdish government’s representative to the United States and a former journalist, tweeted that Kurdistan “has lost a courageous and professional journalist who cracked the glass ceiling.”
More than 1,500 Iraqi civilians were evacuated from the newly liberated al-Mamoun neighborhood in southwestern Mosul after ISIS had been “holding them as human shields,” said Jasem Mohammad al-Jaff, Iraq’s minister of migration and displacement.
They were taken to a refugee camp and to al-Qayyara airfield south of Mosul, he said.
Lt. Gen. Abdul Amir Rasheed Yarallah, commander of Iraqi forces in Nineveh province, said counterterrorism forces continued to clear al-Mamoun and were storming the Wadi Hajjar neighborhood.
Iraqi forces launched their bid to retake the western parts of the city on Sunday after declaring the east had been liberated last month.
Mohammed Al Mawsily, manager of a radio station that broadcasts exclusively to Mosul from Irbil, told CNN that listeners who’d called in from the embattled city since the offensive began had expressed some cautious optimism.
However, it had become harder for them to call Alghad FM because of the worsening conditions, he said. A lack of power is making it difficult to charge cell phones, with many people relying on generators for electricity at the same time fuel prices are rising.
Mosul residents also complain that food is in short supply and what little can be found is prohibitively expensive, he said.
On Saturday, Iraqi armored units took control of the electric power station in the nearby village of al-Yarmouk, according to a statement from Yarallah, the Iraqi commander in Nineveh. The power station provides electricity to Mosul.
Pirate radio risks death to fight ISIS on the airwaves
‘Most dangerous phase’
The International Rescue Committee warned Friday that this second stage of the Mosul operation could be the “most dangerous phase” for civilians as Iraqi troops seek to secure densely populated areas amid ISIS resistance.
“This will be a terrifying moment for the 750,000 people still in the west of the city, and there is a real danger that the battle will be raging around them for weeks and possibly months to come,” said Jason Kajer, the Iraq acting country director for the humanitarian group.
“Everything must be done to keep civilians out of the firing line, and as Iraqi forces reach individual neighborhoods, people must be given the opportunity to escape the city safely.”
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Friday promised that Iraqi forces would do all they could to keep civilians safe.
“We will exert the utmost effort to rescue the civilians and protect them, provide safe corridors for their exit, receive and (transfer) them to the safe camps,” he said in a statement from his media office.
He also congratulated the armed forces on their victories against “defeated Daesh terrorist gangs,” using an Arabic name for ISIS.
Police: Bombs, weapons seized
The Iraqi Joint Operations Command said Friday that Mosul International Airport and the nearby Ghazlani military camp on the outskirts of southwestern Mosul had been fully liberated.
More than 50 ISIS militants were killed and scores wounded in Friday’s operation, Jaudat said.
Iraqi forces also destroyed 25 improvised explosive devices and seized several weapons as they liberated the first residential neighborhood in western Mosul, he said.
Meanwhile, Iraq’s Shiite-led Popular Mobilization Units liberated two villages west of Tal Afar, a town to the west of Mosul. The militia evacuated 1,200 civilians from the villages, the PMU’s directorate said Saturday.
CNN’s Kareem Khadder and Ingrid Formanek reported from Irbil, while Laura Smith-Spark wrote from London. CNN’s Ray Sanchez and Hamdi Alkhshali contributed to this report.