The Islamic State forces young men to fight for them in Mosul

The Islamic State is in evident difficulty in the last part of western Mosul, once their de facto capital city in Iraq.

The Iraqi Elite Federal Police and Rapid Response units are tightening their noose day by day and a military defeat seems to be due soon and terrorist are desperately trying to defend the little territory they still control.

Despite what is good news for the Iraqi government, civilians within the city are still living frightening and perilous moments. Iraqi officers informed Reuters that Islamic state terrorists are forcing young men to fight for them.

A Federal Police intelligence officer, Captain Ali al-Kinani, said the militants wanted to fill up their ranks as they had suffered heavy casualties.

"Many families that fled the fight asked our troops to help their sons. Some young men hiding inside their houses are still waiting for our forces to secure their neighbourhoods and rescue them," he said.

This could be a sing of the growing desperation of the terrorists. Their battle to retain Mosul has militarily been a failure and they are now completely isolated after six months of heavy fighting.

The part of the city that they still control is fully inhabited and even if the IS is losing, civilians keep being exposed to hostilities. US officials estimates that nearly 2,000 terrorists are still fighting in the western part of the city. The Islamic state keeps using the populace's houses as operational bases and families as human shields.

On Monday morning, many civilians managed to escape the city thanks to the heavy rain and the fog covering the city.

Ali, a former government worker, said he had hidden his sons in a basement when Islamic State fighters came looking for recruits. "It feels like the siege is ending. All they are doing now is defending," he told Reuters. "I hid my sons in the basement and told them if you want my sons you will have to kill me."

According to Yassin, a butcher who also escaped from the west side, the people of Mosul are increasingly aware of the situation and try to keep distant from the terrorists.

"They would come to my butcher shop looking for people so people stayed away. People even stopped going to the mosque because sometimes they would come to take people from there to join the fighting," he said.

Those who try to escape from the IS control are also in peril since the organisation threatens and attack them. Terrorists know that losing the possibility to use human shields will make them even more vulnerable.

"A French militant beat me and threatened me to force me to stay," told Reuters one woman who gave her name as Um Tahseen.

Iraqi forces are proceeding as scheduled, their nex military target is the old city's al-Nuri Mosque, from where Abu Bakhr al-Baghdadi announced the caliphate in 2014.

Al-Baghdadi has reportedly fled the city and there are no certain information about his whereabouts. Some speculates that he could hiding in the desert surrounding Mosul, while others think he already reached Raqqa, the IS capital city in Syria.

Several Islamis State commanders are still within Mosul and have been under attack in the poast few days. On Sunday, the US-led coalition conducted an air strike against an IS command killing six foreign commanders, including a Russian, Abdul Kareem al-Rusi, who headed the Tareq Bin Ziyad Brigade.

(Reuters)