About 100 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters were at this frontline position in Eski Mosul late last week, perhaps the most contested piece of real estate in northern Iraq. It sits at a junction that leads from Mosul to Tal Afar and beyond to the Syrian bordera critical supply line for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Supported by coalition air strikes, the Kurds swept down to seize the area late last month.
Now they are engaged in daily battles with ISIS fighters, many of whom are local, according to Kurdish commanders who listen in on ISIS radio communications.
Between the sandbags and through the haze, a white building 800 yards away protected an ISIS position. After one mortar was (this time successfully) fired at the building, a sniper’s bullet shot over the Kurds’ position with a faint hiss — as if to say “You missed.”
The Peshmerga are now well dug in at Eski Mosul with mortar batteries, at least one MILAN anti-tank missile and heavy machine guns. The MILAN is especially useful for taking out vehicles rigged up as suicide bombs. The wreckage of one sits just 100 yards from the Kurds’ defensive positions.
In two days, the Peshmerga say, ISIS sent 20 vehicle bombs up the road, a sign of how badly the terrorists want to retake this position. One had 8.5 tons of TNT primed to explode, according to Kurdish commanders, but its driver was shot and killed before he could detonate the device.
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“With the government responding to those they deem terrorists with arbitrary arrests and executions, residents have nowhere to turn for protection,” Stork said.
And that’s just what ISIS wants.
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