This is going to be a mess, before, during and after the battle.
It is time to revisit the siege concept.
Identical scenario to the battle of Manila, Feb-March 1945.
If we were to arm those civilians, would they fight against their captors?
It's always a risk supplying arms to these Mideast nutjobs, but maybe worth it?
Estimates are up to ~8k IS psychos in Mosul. To put things in perspective, the U.S. military took on half that number of jihadis in the two battles of Fallujah. The U.S. military had a force of over 10k composed of 101st, 82nd, 1st ID, 3rd Armored, 1st Special Forces, 5th Special Forces, multiple SEAL teams, Blackwater mercs, AC-130’s, F-16’s dropping 2000 lb. bombs, etc. and even before they went in they vacated the city of civilians and blasted AC/DC and Metallica 24/7. Still, both battles took 6 weeks to pacify and U.S. had over 120 KIA and over 600 wounded.
Put this in perspective. The world’s most powerful military took 6 weeks to pacify a vacated with 4k ragtag jihadis were holed up and 2k ended up being captured (i.e., didn’t fight to the death). Here you have 8k total psycho IS fighters who aren’t the surrendering type, who know they won’t be surrendering to a military which is UCMJ compliant with embedded JAG lawyers. And on the other side of the ongoing Mosul operation you have poorly trained ISF who love victories but hate fighting for them. Peshmerga are much better than ISF but have a small fraction of the efficiency of the U.S. military.
I don’t know. If IS stays and fights it out it might be a long fight.
“the fight is expected to be bloody”
So be it. Any captured ISIS fighters should be sent across the minefields to detonate mines.