Iraqi forces recaptured Mosul's main government compound from Isis today, marking a strategic and symbolic advance into the northern city at the heart of the militant group's self-proclaimed caliphate.
In a surprise pre-dawn local time raid, elite police units seized the government buildings in the Bab al-Tob neighbourhood of western Mosul, including a central square where the militants carried out public executions. Commanders said that they faced limited resistance and that the group's grip on the city is crumbling.
Mosul, home to more than a million people, is the last major city that Isis (Islamic State) controls in Iraq and the biggest population centre it seized during a large-scale land grab in 2014. Tens of thousands of Iraqi forces have waged a bitter campaign since mid-October to retake the city, suffering heavy casualties as the militants have launched car bombings and other attacks.
The pace of the Iraqi advance has picked up in recent weeks after police forces led a push into the city's western side, but the human toll is also mounting as the fighting moves through densely populated neighbourhoods. The Government estimates that about 10,000 people are fleeing each day.
Airwars, a Britain-based organisation that tracks allegations of civilian deaths, said today that civilian casualties appear to have escalated this month, with hundreds reported killed in what it described as a "bloody harbinger".