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The long-awaited operation to retake Mosul from ISIL officially started October 17, 2016. Led by Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), Kurdish Peshmerga forces, and Popular Mobilization Units (Al-Hashd Al- Sha’abi) with support from the US-led Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJT-OIR) advanced on outlying villages and the city’s easternmost and southernmost outskirts. In retaliation, ISIL launched diversionary counterattacks and terrorist strikes on Sinjar, Kirkuk, and Rutbah. ISIL propaganda outlets simultaneously publicized that Iraqi and US airstrikes had allegedly struck mosques in Kirkuk and Ninawa Governorates in an apparent attempt to undermine support for the liberation effort among Sunni Arab populations. As the Mosul Operation clears ISIL from remote areas, many of which are predominantly occupied by ethnic or religious minority populations, the vanguard of military units, aid works, and journalists will uncover new evidence of vandalism and destruction of cultural heritage sites and other crimes of cultural cleansing committed by ISIL occupiers. Many of these communities have been cut off from contact with the outside world for the last two years. The first such evidence of ISIL incurred damage has been found in the Christian town of Bartella. ASOR CHI will continue to monitor the Mosul Operation and document and analyze this evidence as it is emerges in an attempt to bracket the date of each incident and to identify the perpetrators involved. Given that this is an active combat situation, we must carefully distinguish between recent collateral damage, other types of damage incurred during the Mosul Operation, and ISIL intentional acts of cultural cleansing.

In Syria, airstrikes continue to inflict severe damage to densely populated urban areas, damaging religious cultural heritage in Deir Ez-Zor, Idlib, Rif Dimashq, and Aleppo Governorates. Although relief efforts and humanitarian ceasefires continue to be proposed by all sides in Aleppo, no concrete action has been taken, exacerbating an already dire situation. Russia, meanwhile, continues to bolster its military presence in Syria with the likely goal of capitalizing on recent SARG and pro-regime advances throughout the country, particularly in opposition-held areas of Aleppo. In northern Aleppo Governorate, Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces recaptured the town of Dabiq, a symbolically significant location extensively mentioned in ISIL propaganda.