Iraqi snipers target Mosul jihadists

Iraq has deployed snipers to target jihadists using civilians as human shields in Mosul, as it investigates air strikes that reportedly killed large numbers of residents in the city, the military said on Sunday.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians are still trapped in Mosul, caught between advancing Iraqi forces and the Islamic State group jihadists that they are fighting to defeat. Iraqi officials and witnesses said that air strikes killed civilians in the Mosul al-Jadida area in recent days, but the number of victims — said to range from dozens to hundreds — could not be independently confirmed.

IS "began to use citizens as human shields, and we are trying to target them with... snipers to eliminate them," Joint Operations Command spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool said. Iraqi forces are relying on "light and medium weapons, among them sniper (rifles), to hunt for Daesh members" located among civilians, he said. However, Iraqi forces have also frequently fired mortar rounds and unguided rockets during the battle for west Mosul — weapons that pose a much greater risk to residents of areas where fighting is taking place. Rasool accused IS of gathering civilians together and then blowing up explosives-rigged vehicles nearby to make it look like "Iraqi forces are targeting innocent civilians."

He also said that Iraq has begun a probe into reports of civilians killed by air strikes in Mosul. "The defence ministry opened an investigation into this issue," Rasool said.

The US-led coalition against IS has indicated that it may have been responsible for at least some of the civilian deaths. "An initial

review of strike data indicates that, at the request of the Iraqi security forces, the coalition struck (IS) fighters and equipment, March 17, in west Mosul at the location corresponding to allegations of civilian casualties," it said in a statement on Sunday. At the beginning of March the international alliance had said that "it is more likely than not, at least 220 civilians were unintentionally killed by coalition strikes", while other incidents were still under investigation.