The commander of a joint operations center that oversees the Mosul campaign, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Yarellah, said in a statement that troops had "fully liberated" the al-Elam neighborhood and raised the Iraqi flag over its buildings. READ MORE: Mosul residents 'won't leave' despite dire conditions

Although it has made advances inside eastern Mosul, the army says it is battling in the toughest urban warfare imaginable - facing hundreds of suicide car bomb attacks, mortar barrages, sniper fire, and ambushes launched from a network of tunnels. Backed by the U.S.-led international coalition, Iraqi government troops and paramilitary forces opened the campaign in October to dislodge Islamic State militants from Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city and the last major Islamic State urban bastion in the country.
The Iraqi Army bears down on a strategic bridge across the Tigris River in Mosul. Fighting is occurring in the Salam neighbourhood less than 1.5 kilometres from the Tigris.