An Islamic State fighter being taken into custody in Mosul on Saturday. AP/PTI

Mosul, February 25

US-backed Iraqi forces pushed deeper into western Mosul on Saturday, advancing in several populated southern districts after punching through the defences of Islamic State’s last major urban stronghold in Iraq a day earlier.About 1,000 civilians also walked across the frontlines, the largest movement since the new offensive launched last week to deal the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim group a decisive blow.In Baghdad, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir met Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Saturday in the first such visit in more than a decade between Sunni Muslim-ruled Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite-led Iraq.The new push in Mosul comes after government forces and their allies finished clearing IS from the east of the northern Iraqi city last month, confining the insurgents to the western sector on the other side of the Tigris river.Commanders expect the battle in western Mosul to be more difficult, in part because tanks and armoured vehicles cannot pass through the narrow alleyways that crisscross ancient districts there.But Iraqi forces have so far made quick advances on multiple fronts, capturing the northern city’s airport on Thursday, which they plan to use as a support zone, and breaching a 3-m-high berm and trench set up by the IS.The forces are less than 3 km from the mosque in the old city where IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate spanning Iraq and Syria in 2014. — Reuters

Civilians flee

• About a thousand civilians, mostly women and children, walked out of southwestern parts of Mosul on Saturday and climbed into military trucks taking them to camps further south
• The UN says up to 4,00,000 people may have to leave their homes during the new offensive as food and fuel runs out in western Mosul