BAGHDAD // ISIL blocked all mobile phone networks in Mosul on Thursday, accusing informants in the city of tipping off coalition forces to their whereabouts.
Residents of Mosul – the largest Iraqi city that the militant group controls – described a scene of “chaos” and “paralysis” in the city on Thursday, a day after the militants announced their decision on their Mosul-based radio network.
Businesses were at a standstill as residents tried to understand what was happening, they said. Some are still able to access the internet, which operates under a different network.
The militants seized the city in June during their lightning advance across northern Iraq, after the Iraqi military virtually crumbled when confronted by the group.
The US began launching airstrikes on August 8 and has conducted at least 22 strikes around Mosul alone.
Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the group’s reclusive leader, made his first video appearance in Mosul in July to announce his vision for a self-styled caliphate.
Baghdad-based political analyst Hadi Jalo said that the latest move by ISIL is a clear sign that the militants are losing confidence after a string of recent victories by Iraqi troops, backed by Shiite and Kurdish militiamen.
“Even the people in Mosul, who hate the Shiite-led government, are becoming less sympathetic with the militants – whose main victims are Sunnis, not Shiites, nowadays,” said Mr Jalo.
The shutting down of phone lines is a notable change from what has been the group’s core strategy so far – focusing on providing services and establishing administration in areas it controls to win support of the locals.
In parts of Syria under its control, the group now administers courts, fixes roads and even polices traffic. In Syria, government warplanes kept up air raids on the northern city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the ISIL group, killing at least seven people on Thursday, activists said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said one of the raids struck the house of a judge facing the extremist group’s tax collection centre. Another air raid targeted an ISIL group checkpoint.
Also on Thursday, Iraqi forces held off a militant assault on the government headquarters in the capital of Anbar province, deploying reinforcements in the key battleground against ISIL.
Security forces, backed by tribesmen, managed to defend the complex in Ramadi, which lies 100 kilometres west of Baghdad and is one of the last major urban areas in Anbar under government control.
* Associated Press , with additional reporting from Agence France-Presse