Iraqi general: Mosul battle to end in days

The battle to take full control of Mosul from Islamic State of  Iraq and the Levant will be over in a few days and an attempted fight-back by the militants failed, an Iraqi general told Reuters on June 26.

"Only a small part remains in the city, specifically the Old City," said Lieutenant General Abdul Ghani al-Assadi, commander of the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) elite units in Mosul.

"From a military perspective, Daesh (Islamic State) is finished," Assadi said. 

"It lost its fighting spirit and its balance, we are making calls to them to surrender or die."

The area now under ISIL control in Mosul, once the militant group's de facto capital in Iraq, is less than 2 square kilometers, the Iraqi military said.

An attempt by ISIL militants late on June 25 to return to neighborhoods outside the Old City failed, Assadi said, adding the city would fall "in very few days, God willing."

The CTS is leading the fight in the densely populated maze of narrow alleyways of the historic Old City which lies by the western bank of the Tigris river.

A U.S.-led international coalition is providing air and ground support in the eight-month-old offensive.

Up to 350 militants 'besieged' in Old City

The militants last week destroyed the historic Grand al-Nuri Mosque and its leaning minaret from which their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate spanning parts of Iraq and Syria three years ago. The mosque's grounds remain under the militants' control.  

Iraqi troops captured the neighborhood of al-Faruq in the northwestern side of the Old City facing the mosque, the military said on June 26.

Iraqi forces took the eastern side of Mosul from ISIL in January,...