US coalition: Daesh command center destroyed in Mosul

BAGHDAD: The US-led military coalition on Saturday said its forces destroyed a building in the main medical complex of western Mosul, suspected to house a Daesh command center.
The militant group disputed the assertion, saying in an online statement that Friday’s strike killed 18 people, mostly women and children, and wounded 47.
Independent media have no access to western Mosul or other areas under Daesh control in Iraq and Syria.
The militants are essentially under siege in western Mosul, along with an estimated 650,000 civilians, after US-backed forces surrounding the city dislodged them from the east in the first phase of an offensive that concluded last month.
The coalition accused Daesh of using the five-story building as a military command and control facility.
“The coalition was able to determine through intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance efforts that Daesh did not use the building for any medical purposes and that civilians were no longer accessing the site,” a coalition statement said.
The strike followed reports that the militants are dug in among civilians on the western side of Mosul and storing weapons in hospitals, schools, mosques and churches as a tactic to avoid targeting.
Iraqi forces, after capturing the east in January, have been gearing up for a final assault on the western part of Mosul that officials say could come at any time.
In past weeks, people have been slipping out of the western sector, saying a mix of poverty and low food stocks meant that getting food had become a serious problem.
Umm Mohammed decided to flee western Mosul after her husband told her the alternative was that they starve.
Their family — six boys and a girl — had been eating little for the last three months as money ran out and supplies became harder to get a hold of in the half of the northern Iraqi city that is still under the rule of Daesh.
“People were eating whatever they had, water with bread, or water with tomato paste,” said Umm Mohammed. Her kids sometimes went to bed without even that. She and her family made it to eastern Mosul, then to a camp for displaced people outside the city.
She spoke on condition she be identified by her traditional honorific because she feared for the safety of relatives still in western Mosul.
The UN estimates that up to 750,000 civilians may be left in the western half of the city. Aid agencies have no access and all the commercial arteries have been blocked. Since the beginning of the year, around 140 families — some 600 people — have made it out of the west to the camps of displaced, according to the UN.
The militants have been trying to prevent residents from leaving.
Dafr Mohammed, a 24-year-old farmer from Baddoush, a town on the northern outskirts of the city, said he arranged a boat to cross the Tigris River to the eastern side but was caught by the militants. He was only able to get out because he convinced them his wife was sick and needed a doctor — and because he left other relatives back in the west, which they took as a guarantee.
“Most nights we went to bed hungry, including the two kids,” said Mohammed.
He said the problem was not so much the lack of food but that people had no more money to pay for it. “Daesh took all the wheat and barley we harvested this year without payment so we did not have any money,” he said.
Prices in western Mosul have skyrocketed, especially after the road to Syria was blocked late last year, because no more food was coming in, those who escaped said. A 50 kg sack of rice rose to 120,000 dinars ($95), from 19,000 ($15). A sack of flour, once 1,000 dinars ($.80), is now 7,000 ($6).
Abdul-Rahman Aouf Aziz, a 24-year-old who fled in January, said he had got out because he could not handle it anymore and was prepared to risk his life in the escape.
“There was no life left there. It had become very hard,” he said.