This segment originally aired Jan. 25, 2016, on VICE News Tonight on HBO.
After more than 100 days of fighting, most of Eastern Mosul has been liberated from ISIS control. Now, Iraqi troops are planning a Western offensive to capture the rest of the city.
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Iraqi forces say that between 5,000 and 6,000 ISIS militants were inside Mosul when the current offensive began, and 3,300 have been killed.
The work is painstaking, requiring the army to go from house to house to ensure that there are no ISIS fighters remaining. Suicide bombers have been waiting in houses and tunnels to attack.
“We are speaking about [an] area more than 500 kilometers. We have liberated that,” Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service’s Sabah al-Norman told VICE News correspondent Ben Anderson in Eastern Mosul. “More than 3,000 fighters … we killed them. More than 60 neighborhoods.”
