CAIRO (Sputnik) — According to Zubaidi, the Iraqi Army and the coalition supporting it register all movements of the terrorists.
“The arrival of reinforcements from Syria to the terrorists in Mosul is the misinformation distributed by the Islamic State. On the contrary, there were some witnessed attempts of the IS [Daesh] militants to flee from Mosul to Syria,” the spokesman told RIA Novosti.
On October 17, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi announced the start of the operation to retake Mosul from Daesh. More than 30,000 Iraqi and 4,000 Kurdish fighters are taking part in the offensive, backed by about 5,000 US troops and supported by coalition airstrikes.