Hundreds flee ISIS stronghold of Mosul as Iraqi troops take eastern edge of city and create escape route for terrorised civilians
Special forces make dramatic breakthrough into city to free Gogjali district and let hundreds of families evacuate to safe camps
HUNDREDS of Iraqis fled Mosul yesterday after Iraqi-led forces managed to fight their way into the city to create a safe route for the inhabitants to escape.
They clambered onto trucks laid on by the military to take them to camps north of the city after Iraqi troops stormed into the eastern area of the ISIS stronghold.
Civilians waved white flags as they came out of their homes to leave the misery behind. A senior military commander said 5,000 Iraqis had been evacuated.
Families trapped inside the city told how the had ran out of food while they cowered inside their homes.
A woman told CNN how IS had placed roadside bombs outside their homes and shot at civilians as they fled.
She said: "It's very hard to describe our feelings right now. It feels like we have new life breathed into us - a new soul."
Many men shaved off their beards in the streets to show their relief at being free from IS control.
The breakthrough is the start of a major push to take the IS-held city. Up to 100,000 coalition troops have taken part in the push towards Mosul which began on October 17, freeing villages under IS control along the way.
Many of the soldiers involved have been women, including Iranian-Kurdish female fighters who fought in Bashiqa, to the east of Mosul.
But only Iraqi Special Forces have taken part in the assault on Mosul itself and have nearly captured the district of Gogjali on the eastern side of the city.
They now face intense fighting as they try to take more of the IS stronghold.
Clearing just the first two blocks inside Mosul involved heavy clashes. But witnesses said coalition airstrikes over the past few says had forced IS to abandon some of their checkpoints in the city.
But the challenge remains to identify the IS fighters from ordinary civilians. As many as 550 families, mainly women and children, are believed to have been snatched from villages outside Mosul to be used as human shields by the terror group.
More than a million more Iraqis remain trapped inside the city and the fight for control of it will be intense. It is the final urban stronghold of IS left in Iraq.
The terror group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is thought to have left Mosul, despite issuing a rallying cry earlier this week urging his fighters to stand their ground to "liberate" the city.
Iraqi forces had hoped to "pick off" fleeing jihadi warlords as they storm the city but many are expected to have fled via Mad Max-style tunnelling machines.
In the lead up to the storming of Mosul, IS fighters set oil fields south of Mosul and a sulphur plant on fire in an attempt to halt the advancing coalition forces.
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