IS cornered in Mosul

US-backed Iraqi army units yesterday took control of the last major road out of western Mosul that had been in Islamic State's hands, trapping the militants in a shrinking area within the city, a general and residents said.

The army's 9th Armored Division was within a kilometer of Mosul's Syria Gate, the city's northwestern entrance, a general from the unit told Reuters by telephone.

Iraqi forces captured the eastern side of Mosul in January after 100 days of fighting and launched their attack on the districts that lie west of the Tigris river on Feb 19.

If they defeat Islamic State in Mosul, that would crush the Iraq wing of the caliphate declared by the group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2014 from the city's grand old Nuri Mosque.

The US-led coalition effort against Islamic State is killing the group's fighters more quickly than it can replace them, British Major General Rupert Jones, deputy commander for the Combined Joint Task Force said.

With more than 45,000 killed by coalition air strikes up to August last year, "their destruction just becomes really a matter of time," he said on Tuesday in London.

The US commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, has said he believes US-backed forces will recapture both Mosul and Raqqa, Islamic State's Syria stronghold in neighboring Syria, within six months.

The closing of the westward highway meant that Islamic State are besieged in the city center, said a military source.

Twenty-six thousand Iraqis fled west Mosul in the 10 days since security forces launched a major push to retake it from jihadists, the minister of displacement and migration said yesterday.

But the number who have fled is only a small fraction of the 750,000 people who are believed to have stayed on in west Mosul under Islamic State group rule.

IS militants are using mortars, sniper fire, booby traps and suicide car bombs to fight the offensive carried out by a 100,000-strong force made up of Iraqi armed forces, regional Kurdish peshmerga fighters and Iranian-trained Shia Muslim paramilitary groups.