Months after the defeat of the Islamic State in Mosul, Jafaar Subhi, his wife and eight children are the only family that has returned to their district in the Old City. He tells VOA they have no choice but to resettle in their war-torn home. VOA's Kawa Omar reports from Mosul.</s>Thousands of people are fleeing the fighting three days into the assault to reclaim Mosul from Islamic State militanrts. Paul Chapman reports.</s>Iraqi authorities on Thursday arrested four people suspected of having carried out a terrorist attack in Mosul following the city’s recapture last year from the ISIS terrorist group.

“Four wanted individuals were arrested and charged with blowing up a market in Mosul’s eastern Al-Muthanna district in June of last year, causing deaths and injuries,” Captain Jawad Mohamed al-Makhzoumi of the National Security Service (NSS) in Nineveh province (of which Mosul is regional capital) said.

“Initial confessions made by the defendants indicate that they are in fact the culprits and that they are Daesh members,” he added.

In a related development Thursday, Iraqi authorities found the dead body of an unidentified individual in Mosul’s western Mansour district.

“The body is that of a man who sustained gunshot wounds to his head, chest and abdomen,” NSS Captain Mustafa Khalil Ibrahimi said, noting that the body also appeared to bear signs of torture.

While no group has claimed responsibility for the man’s abduction, the Iraqi authorities typically blame such acts of violence on ISIS.

Late last year, officials in Baghdad declared that ISIS's military presence in Iraq had been all but destroyed.

It appears the notorious terrorist group, however, still maintains “sleeper cells” in several parts of the country, including the northern Nineveh province.

This article has been adapted from its original source.</s>Iraqi special forces battle Islamic State militants inside the Mosul University campus on the second day of fierce clashes in the complex. Rough Cut (no reporter narration).</s>In this Sunday, Dec. 18, 2016 file photo, a member of the Iraqi Special Forces shoots his machine gun against an Islamic State militant drone n the al-Barid district in Mosul, Iraq. | AP

MOSUL: Iraqi troops backed by U.S.-led airstrikes pushed deeper into eastern Mosul on Thursday in a multi-pronged assault after a two-week lull in the operation to retake the Islamic State-held city.

Elite special forces pushed into the Karama and Quds neighbourhoods, while army troops and federal police advanced into nearby Intisar, Salam and Sumor neighbourhoods. Smoke rose across the city as explosions and machine gun fire echoed through the streets.

Stiff resistance by the militants, civilians trapped inside their houses and bad weather have slowed advances in the more than two-month-old offensive to recapture Iraq's second largest city, the extremist group's last urban bastion in the country. It is the biggest Iraqi military operation since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, commander of the special forces in eastern Mosul, said his forces have been bolstered by reinforcements and are now less than 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the Tigris River, which slices the city in half. A U.S.-led coalition airstrike this week destroyed the last remaining bridge over the river.

The special forces, officially known as the Counter Terrorism Service, have done most of the fighting, pushing in from the east. But regular army troops on the city's southeast and northern edges, as well as militarised federal police farther west, have not moved in weeks, unable to penetrate the city.

The troops have faced gruelling urban fighting, often house to house against IS militants who have had more than two years to dig in and prepare. Even in districts that have been recaptured, Iraqi troops have faced surprise attacks, shelling and car bombs. The extremists have launched more than 900 car bombs against Iraqi troops in and around Mosul. Al-Saadi said 260 targeted his men.

He said he expected Iraqi forces would drive IS from Mosul and the rest of Nineveh province within three months. Iraqi leaders had previously vowed to drive the extremists from Mosul by the end of the year.

IS captured Mosul in the summer of 2014, when it swept across much of northern and central Iraq, and the group's leader declared the establishment of its self-styled caliphate from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque.

The city is still home to around a million people. Some 120,000 have fled since the operation began on Oct. 17, according to the United Nations.</s>Mosul (IraqiNews.com) A mass grave with the remains of at least 60 Iraqi civilians was found in the former Islamic State bastion, Mosul, a police officer was quoted saying on Wednesday.

Cap. Amir Watheq, from Nineveh police force, told BasNews website that security forces found the grave at Hammam al-Alil in southern Mosul, adding that most of the remains belonged to women who attempted to flee the area during the military campaign to retake the region.

As Iraqi troops recaptured areas held by Islamic State militants since 2014, they have regularly run into mass graves of civilians and security agents executed by the militants for fleeing the group’s havens or collaborating with security forces.

Iraq’s war against the Islamic State displaced millions of civilians both inside and outside the country, and left thousands dead, according to government and United Nations figures. In 2017 alone, violence left more than 3000 dead and more than 4000 wounded.

Iraq declared victory over the Islamic State last December, ending a three-year war to bring down the group’s self-styled “caliphate” declared from Nineveh’s Mosul in 2014. Security continues to comb recaptured areas for remnant cells as a number of attacks against civilians and security grew fears of their resurgence.</s>A boy, rides his bike with an Iraqi flag, in Qayara, south of Mosul, Iraq. | AP

BAGHDAD: Iraqi officials say bombings in and around Baghdad have killed at least 14 people and wounded more than 50.

Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.

No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they bore the hallmarks of IS, which has taken credit for similar bombings. The extremist group has repeatedly targeted Iraq's Shiite majority and security forces.

An Iraqi officer says hundreds of hungry civilians are lining up for food in eastern neighborhoods of Mosul recently retaken from the Islamic State group.

Maj. Salam al-Obeidi says some 700 residents assembled Tuesday in three areas of the Zahra and Qadisiya neighborhoods, the latter of which was the scene of a fierce IS counterattack a day earlier.

He says Iraqi forces gave the people their own food but did not have enough to meet their needs.

Iraq launched a major offensive last month to drive IS out of the northern city, the country's second largest, which is still home to more than 1 million civilians.

The United Nations says fires set by Islamic State militants at oil wells and a chemical plant near Mosul have forced over 1,500 people to seek medical treatment for respiratory problems.

The group's humanitarian affairs coordination office says Tuesday the fires have emitted toxic smoke for 25 to 60 days, affecting 14 towns.

It says the mid- and long-term effects on people's health, the environment, agriculture and livelihoods could be dire.

IS shelled and set fire to the al-Mishraq Sulfur Gas Factory south of Mosul in late October, causing the deaths of at least four people from toxic fumes, the U.N. has said, likening the attack to the use of chemical weapons.

Nearby oil wells set ablaze by IS have been burning uncontrollably since June.
Counterterror forces in Ninevah arrest and charge four suspected Islamic State members over a fatal bombing at a market in regional capital Mosul last year. Separately, authorities discover an unidentified corpse in Mosul thought to be connected.