Iraqi forces have fully retaken east Mosul from the Islamic State group, a top commander said yesterday, three months after a huge offensive against the jihadist bastion was launched.
Elite forces have in recent days entered the last neighbourhoods on the eastern side of Mosul, on the left bank of the Tigris River that runs through the city.
Speaking at a press conference in Bartalla, a town east of Mosul, Staff General Talib al-Sheghati, who heads the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), announced "the liberation... of the left bank".
Sheghati added however that while the east of the city could be considered under government control, some work remained to be done to flush out the last holdout jihadists.
The "important lines and important areas are finished," he said, adding that "there is only a bit of the northern (front) remaining."
Yesterday's announcement marks the end of a phase in the operation launched on October 17 to retake Mosul, Iraq's second city and the last major urban stronghold IS has in the country.
The offensive, Iraq's largest military operation in years with tens of thousands of fighters involved, began with a focus on sparsely populated areas around Mosul.
CTS entered the city proper in November and encountered tougher than expected resistance from IS, whose fighters launched a huge number of suicide car bombs against advancing Iraqi forces.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said late on Tuesday that IS had been severely weakened in the Mosul campaign, and that the military had begun "moving" against it in western Mosul, without elaborating.
Residents reached by phone said air strikes against IS deep inside western Mosul had increased in recent days.
The fighting inside Mosul has been complicated by the continued presence of much of its population, which did not or could not flee when Iraqi forces started advancing.
According to the United Nations, around 150,000 people are currently displaced as a result of the three-month-old offensive.
Mosul lies around 350 kilometres (220 miles) northwest of Baghdad in the country's north and had an estimated population of close to two million when IS overran it in early June 2014.
Jihadist supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed a "caliphate" straddling parts of Iraq and Syria from a mosque on the west bank of Mosul days later.