Bahrain Mirror: A spokesman for the US-led coalition said on Tuesday that the battle to retake Mosul from ISIS has become "very hard" in recent weeks, but the pace will quicken once Iraqi forces manage to push in from the north and south of the city, Reuters reported.

The Iraqi government forces quickly recaptured outlying towns and villages when the Mosul campaign began last month, but have become bogged down in fierce street fighting since entering the city's eastern neighborhoods.

"Right now it's very hard," US Air Force Colonel John Dorrian, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the coalition supporting Iraqi forces, told Reuters by telephone. 

"ISIL (ISIS) has been in the city for two years with a lot of time to build very elaborate defenses and to hoard weapons and resources that are now being used to complicate the advance," he went on to say.

Dorrian was referring to the extremists' use of suicide car bombs and civilian human shields, according to the news agency.

Iraq's elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) is making incremental advances in east Mosul in the face of the militants' use of suicide bombers and snipers to defend their Iraqi bastion.

Meanwhile, forces stationed to the north and south have struggled to advance into the inner city itself. Dorrian also noted his hopes that when those advances take place, progress will speed up.

"As these additional forces converge on the city, that's really going to diffuse the Daesh (ISIS) defenses," he said. "(They) will no longer be able to concentrate the level of attention that they have on the eastern (districts)," he further stated.

The US Air Force Colonel indicated, "Iraqi security forces will develop a higher degree of momentum and a ... faster pace and tempo in liberating the city."

Arabic Version