British ISIS fighter launches suicide bomb attack south of the besieged Iraqi city of Mosul ‘claiming many casualties’
The Islamist terror group name the bomber as Abu Zakariya al-Britani
A BRIT suicide bomber has blown up a vehicle full of explosives during a attack near the Iraqi city of Mosul claiming 'many casualties', ISIS claimed today.
The Islamist terror group - currently battling an Iraqi military offensive aimed at re-taking the battlefront city - named the bomber as Abu Zakariya al-Britani.
In a statement on the SITE website, the group said he detonated an explosives-filled vehicle in Tal Kisum village, south of Mosul.
ISIS said the explosion had claimed many casualties, but this has not been confirmed by those on the ground.
"The martyrdom-seeking brother Abu Zakariya al-Britani - may Allah accept him - detonated his explosives-laden vehicle on a headquarters of the Rafidhi army and its militias," the claim quoted by SITE said.
The end part of his name, al-Britani, is a common named used by fighters who have come from Britain.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi forces launched a massive offensive on Friday to retake the city, which is Iraq's second largest and the only remaining major ISIS stronghold in the country.
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Tens of thousands of Iraqi forces launched a massive offensive on Friday to retake the city, which is Iraq's second largest and the only remaining major ISIS stronghold in the country.
They retook control of the eastern side of Mosul last month.
An estimated 2,000 ISIS fighters are now left in west Mosul to defend their bastion against a massive offensive by the Iraqi security forces, a senior US intelligence official said Monday.
"There's about 2,000 remaining," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity during a trip to Iraq by the new Pentagon chief, Jim Mattis.
The estimate which the US-led coalition supporting Iraqi forces gave before the October 17 launch of a huge operation on Mosul was that the city was defended by 5,000 to 7,000 jihadists.
The coalition has not provided figures but it has said that the four-month-old campaign on Mosul had inflicted heavy casualties on IS.
Commanders and experts expect that the fighting in west Mosul could be the bloodiest yet.
The neighbourhoods that lie west of the Tigris River that divides the city are densely populated, have narrow streets that will be impassable for some military vehicles and are home to populations that could be more hostile that on the east bank.
Mattis, a retired Marine general who commanded troops during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, has been touring the region and arrived in Baghdad early Monday on a unannounced visit.
ISIS fighters of a variety of nationalities, including Britons, have carried out suicide attacks on many occasions in Iraq and Syria in the past three years.
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