On Mosul’s eerily quiet streets, residents prepare for the storm to come

Large groups of ISIL militants have left the city in recent weeks, according to residents, but those who remain have become increasingly brutal, killing anyone suspected of trying to communicate with the outside world.

Smoke rises from ISIL positions in the Mosul area after an airstrike by the US-led coalition fighting the extremists on October 18, 2016. AP Photo

BAGHDAD // On the eerily quiet streets of Mosul, fighters from ISIL are killing suspected spies, blocking roads and planting bombs ahead of a showdown with Iraqi forces.

Residents who have endured more than two years of extremist rule say a new sense of terror has set in since Iraq announced the start of a long-anticipated operation to liberate its second-largest city.

Three residents describe a city under siege; a ghost town where people only venture out to buy basic goods that are running increasingly low.

Large groups of ISIL militants have left the city in recent weeks, the residents say, but those who remain have become increasingly brutal, killing anyone suspected of trying to communicate with the outside world.

“The situation inside Mosul is terrifying,” says one resident, a merchant. He says he has stocked food, water and cooking gas for 40 days and bought an oven to bake bread.

ISIL released a propaganda video on Tuesday showing bustling streets in Mosul, with residents going about their business – one grilling meat over open coals, and saying all is well.

But these three residents paint a very different picture.

They say ISIL militants patrol Mosul’s streets on bicycles or motorbikes to make for smaller targets from the air. Other fighters are preparing for war by closing roads with sand berms and concrete walls, and readying barrels of oil and tyres to set ablaze in order to obscure the visibility of warplanes from the US-led coalition.

The extremists have also grown increasingly paranoid and violent. On Sunday evening, the fighters shot a man twice in the head in front of his family and neighbours, a resident says. His crime: possession of a Sim card for a mobile phone.

A few days earlier, five men accused of spying were killed by firing squad in a public square.

Mosul is completely dark at night because ISIL forbids the use of any generators, fearing the lights could draw airstrikes.

“Every minute passes like a year,” says a father of three.

Residents heard about the start of the offensive on the radio, he says, with the city rattled by airstrikes on its outskirts.

“We have mixed feelings. We are happy that we will eventually be liberated from Daesh and afraid of what will happen afterward,” he adds.

“The recent airstrikes are really shaking the ground and houses,” another resident says. “My wife prays and recites verses from the holy Quran when airstrikes start, while children cry. We are afraid that one of these airstrikes might hit us.”

Fearing a mass exodus from the city, which is still home to more than 1 million people, the coalition has dropped leaflets telling people to stay inside. Human rights groups worry that many will run from Mosul to other areas held by ISIL out of fear they could be treated even worse by their purported liberators.

“A lot of people are going to flee,” says Berkis Wille, the senior Iraq researcher for Human Rights Watch, which is in contact with people inside the city. “A lot of them are extremely fearful of what the battle might bring.”

The array of forces converging on Mosul, a mainly Sunni Arab city, includes government-sanctioned Shiite militias who have been accused of abuses in Sunni areas, as well as newly formed fighting units from minority groups like the Yazidis who were brutalised by ISIL.

Sunni Arabs who stayed in Mosul under ISIL rule fear they will be treated like supporters of the extremist group, Ms Wille says. They point to the recapture of Ramadi, which was almost entirely reduced to rubble, and Fallujah, where rights groups say hundreds of men fleeing the city were detained or tortured, or simply disappeared.

* Associated Press