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The funeral has taken place
in Slovakia of the murdered | 0:00:00 | 0:00:01 | |
investigative
journalist, Jan Kuciak. | 0:00:01 | 0:00:02 | |
Hundreds of mourners
attended the ceremony - | 0:00:02 | 0:00:04 | |
a day after the burial
of his fiancee who was shot dead | 0:00:04 | 0:00:07 | |
at the same time. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:09 | |
Now on BBC News our reporter
Ayman Oghanna joins a unit | 0:00:09 | 0:00:12 | |
of the Iraqi special forces
as they advanced on Mosul. | 0:00:12 | 0:00:14 | |
He tells the story of the men
who reclaimed the city. | 0:00:14 | 0:00:24 | |
The fight to retake Mosul. One of
the largest urban conflicts since | 0:00:24 | 0:00:33 | |
the Second World War. And the
frontline in the battle the | 0:00:33 | 0:00:43 | |
so-called Islamic State. I was given
rare access to an elite unit of | 0:00:43 | 0:00:56 | |
Iraq's special forces. The first
team into Mosul. We're just getting | 0:00:56 | 0:01:10 | |
ready to set up a base, and suddenly
we being fired upon by Isis. These | 0:01:10 | 0:01:21 | |
are the men who reunited Iraq and
liberated Mosul. But at what cost? | 0:01:21 | 0:01:55 | |
These are the soldiers of Iraq's
elite Counter-Terrorism Service. | 0:01:55 | 0:02:09 | |
Spirits were high. To them, Mosul
was just another battle. And one | 0:02:09 | 0:02:20 | |
they were going to win. | 0:02:20 | 0:02:27 | |
This major is a gold division of the
site, leading the ground offensive | 0:03:16 | 0:03:20 | |
towards Mosul. The operation
deliberate Mosul is about to begin | 0:03:20 | 0:03:27 | |
for these men. But their primary
target is a string of villages on | 0:03:27 | 0:03:33 | |
the outside of Mosul. But as we set
off, almost read away, the team | 0:03:33 | 0:03:43 | |
discovered a series of roadside
bombs? Isis have been using | 0:03:43 | 0:03:53 | |
improvised explicit devices in
unprecedented numbers. -- explosive. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:59 | |
They've had two years to mind the
entry to the city and the villages | 0:03:59 | 0:04:04 | |
surrounding it. So even on this
off-road track, we have inched to a | 0:04:04 | 0:04:08 | |
crawl, as technicians go ahead
slowly to find them and blow them up | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
in control these potions. --
controlled explosions. As we begin | 0:04:11 | 0:04:28 | |
to move forward again, we suddenly
come under attack. GUNFIRE. | 0:04:28 | 0:04:46 | |
GUNFIRE. | 0:04:57 | 0:05:00 | |
We have just reached the outskirts
of an Islamic state held village. We | 0:05:04 | 0:05:10 | |
don't know if there are Isis
fighters inside. It is a small | 0:05:10 | 0:05:15 | |
village. But the major is getting
all of his men together to move on | 0:05:15 | 0:05:19 | |
the village. GUNFIRE. | 0:05:19 | 0:05:27 | |
So as we are moving into the
village, on the radio, we're hearing | 0:05:36 | 0:05:40 | |
a lot of people shouting white flag.
So we think there are a lot of | 0:05:40 | 0:05:47 | |
people inside the village as well as
Isis fighters. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:50 | |
GUNFIRE. | 0:06:06 | 0:06:11 | |
People may still be trapped inside. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:34 | |
The threat could come from anywhere:
Car bombs, suicide bombers, and | 0:06:39 | 0:06:45 | |
wrote minds. -- road. Intelligence
gathering is vital. | 0:06:45 | 0:06:55 | |
There is a wire. | 0:07:17 | 0:07:23 | |
The major's men are searching and
securing the area. They are looking | 0:07:49 | 0:07:57 | |
for any remaining Isis fighters. | 0:07:57 | 0:08:06 | |
Nothing is taken for granted. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:20 | |
This sniper leads his team to a
rooftop. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:33 | |
They need to survey, secure, and
protect the unit, from men like | 0:08:35 | 0:08:42 | |
themselves on the other side. | 0:08:42 | 0:08:45 | |
The men have captured a suspected
Islamic state fighter. Is he an | 0:09:24 | 0:10:31 | |
early ordinary villager turned by
Isis? -- is he an ordinary villager. | 0:10:31 | 0:11:26 | |
That afternoon, this man's beard is
forced to be removed. The major and | 0:11:26 | 0:11:34 | |
his men would leave the next
morning, leaving them behind. We | 0:11:34 | 0:11:39 | |
never found out whose side he was
on, or what happened here. For these | 0:11:39 | 0:12:00 | |
villages, the war is now over. --
villagers. | 0:12:00 | 0:12:09 | |
It is day two of the advance. Again.
So we have just arrived in the | 0:12:16 | 0:12:37 | |
village here that is supposed to be
secure. We are getting ready to set | 0:12:37 | 0:12:41 | |
up a base and we are being fired
upon by Isis. The soldiers often | 0:12:41 | 0:12:55 | |
told me that fighting this war is
like fighting ghosts. They never saw | 0:12:55 | 0:13:05 | |
them, but they always knew they were
there. | 0:13:05 | 0:13:12 | |
The guys had discovered a tunnel, a
massive, massive tunnel, just ten | 0:14:08 | 0:14:14 | |
metres away from the makeshift
headquarters they have set up. To | 0:14:14 | 0:14:20 | |
avoid coalition airstrikes, Isis
fighters went underground. | 0:14:20 | 0:14:31 | |
IDS constructed a vast network of
elaborate tunnels in which they | 0:14:48 | 0:14:53 | |
could safely move, Hyde, and wait --
Islamic State. Iraqi soldiers called | 0:14:53 | 0:14:58 | |
them rats. | 0:14:58 | 0:15:03 | |
Major Salam sets fire to the
tunnel's entrance. What they're | 0:15:19 | 0:15:32 | |
doing now is taking tyres, burning
them, and putting them into holes | 0:15:32 | 0:15:36 | |
inside the tunnel to literally try
and smoke any Islamic State fighters | 0:15:36 | 0:15:41 | |
left inside. Frontlines taken during
the day can be easily lost at night, | 0:15:41 | 0:15:49 | |
when IS fighters split back across
them to launch a surprise attack. -- | 0:15:49 | 0:16:05 | |
slip back. | 0:16:05 | 0:16:08 | |
IS are attacking through the
tunnels. | 0:16:28 | 0:16:42 | |
Aley has just been shot. Medics are
doing everything they can. | 0:17:25 | 0:17:44 | |
He doesn't make it. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:56 | |
So it has been a pretty rough night.
IS launched a surprise attack. The | 0:18:13 | 0:18:18 | |
response was pretty chaotic. We
joined them as they went in Humvees | 0:18:18 | 0:18:24 | |
and went towards the lines to fight
ISIS, where they killed 30 IS | 0:18:24 | 0:18:29 | |
fighters, they said. But 17 men were
killed and there was a big incident | 0:18:29 | 0:18:35 | |
of friendly fire. Talking to the
guys here has a real element of | 0:18:35 | 0:18:42 | |
sadness and anger even. | 0:18:42 | 0:18:54 | |
We are moving out again, pushing
forward to the outskirts of Mosul. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:30 | |
When IS swept into northern Iraq in
2014, many welcome them as | 0:19:30 | 0:19:34 | |
liberators from and oppressive Shia
dominated government in Baghdad. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:48 | |
There's relief amongst some that
they are gone, but off-camera some | 0:19:48 | 0:19:51 | |
of the people I spoke to were afraid
of government reprisals. | 0:19:51 | 0:19:57 | |
It's the final push into Mosul, a
city of over 1 million people lies | 0:20:10 | 0:20:16 | |
ahead. Over two years ago, the
so-called Islamic State the city of | 0:20:16 | 0:20:21 | |
Mosul and the fears and imaginations
of the world. Today is the day the | 0:20:21 | 0:20:26 | |
Iraqi government is trying to take
it back. But the Golden Division | 0:20:26 | 0:20:30 | |
faced an enemy like no other. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:38 | |
When IS first took the city, the
Iraqi army just fled. Now they are | 0:20:56 | 0:21:08 | |
back. | 0:21:08 | 0:21:11 | |
It's the first time that the Iraqi
army has entered Mosul in more than | 0:21:42 | 0:21:46 | |
two years. | 0:21:46 | 0:21:50 | |
After nine months of grinding urban
warfare through homes and city | 0:22:16 | 0:22:23 | |
streets, these men would finally
capture the ruined heart of the | 0:22:23 | 0:22:28 | |
Islamic State's to factor capital.
-- de facto. | 0:22:28 | 0:22:42 | |
If there is a memorial to this
brutal conflict, then it is here, | 0:22:54 | 0:23:00 | |
the world's largest cemetery and
where most of those killed fighting | 0:23:00 | 0:23:03 | |
the so-called Islamic State are
buried. It's a sprawling monument to | 0:23:03 | 0:23:07 | |
the generations of men who have been
killed in a nation that has gone | 0:23:07 | 0:23:20 | |
from war to war. | 0:23:20 | 0:23:32 |