Mosul

(MEE) An estimated 400,000 Iraqis are trapped in the Islamic State-controlled Old City of west Mosul facing food shortages and growing panic under shelling that could provoke a mass exodus, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said on Thursday.

(ANTIWAR) With the fighting against ISIS increasingly confined to densely populated cities like Mosul and Raqqa, the US air war against them continues to escalate precipitously, with record numbers of airstrikes in recent months, and the coalition dropping over 7,000 munitions on Iraq and Syria in just the last two months.

An aircraft lands after missions targeting the ISIS in Iraq from the deck of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush in the Persian Gulf.

(MEE) The US military has admitted that jets from its coalition launched a devastating air attack that led to the deaths of at least 42 people in a mosque in Syria’s Aleppo province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said missiles hit the mosque in the rebel-held village of al-Jina, south-west of Atarib in the western Aleppo countryside, on Thursday.

(ANTIWAR) Iraqi security officials have confirmed an airstrike carried out by apparent US coalition warplanes against the western half of the city of Mosul killed at least 11 civilians and wounded four others. The Pentagon has thus far not commented at all on the report.

Since January  the tide has turned dramatically against ISIS on almost every front
1.  Mosul
The Iraqi army began its operation to liberate Mosul in October.  Contrary to initial expectations it encountered fierce resistance and the first part of the operation, which was focused on liberating Mosul east of the Tigris proved exceptionally difficult.  Eventually eastern Mosul was liberated but only after many weeks of fierce fighting and after the Iraqi army suffered heavy casualties.

Iraqi federal policemen open the road towards the government complex in the Dawasa neighborhood of western Mosul, Iraq, Tuesday, March 7, 2017. (AP/Khalid Mohammed)
(REPORT) — The US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State may have killed hundreds of civilians in the first week of March in support of Iraqi forces storming western Mosul, according to reports by monitoring group Airwars.

21st Century Wire says…
Over 50,000 people have had to flee Mosul, Iraq, in the last 10 days. In many cases locals have had to endure being stuck in the crossfire between US-led Coalition air strikes and Iraqi forces advancing against ISIS and ISIS themselves who’ve been using the civilian neighborhoods as large human shield zones. 
More from RT on this story…

RT

(ANTIWAR) The Pentagon latest official accounting of civilians killed in US airstrikes in Iraq and Syria follows the same formula as all of the previous reports, admitting to just a tiny fraction of the number of civilians known to be killed, and leaving the overall toll laughably below the estimates by interested NGOs.

Displaced men who fled their homes due to fighting between Iraqi security forces and ISIS militants wait for a security check at an Army base, west of Mosul, Iraq, Feb. 26. 2017. (AP/Khalid Mohammed)