Intense artillery bombardment? Like 8000 tubes for a couple hours?
“Intense artillery bombardment? Like 8000 tubes for a couple hours?”
Not nearly that intense, but intense relative to what they were used to. Also, it was what the professionals estimated to reliably break open the prepared defenses.
It was effective in getting ISIS to fall back to their next line of defenses. They probably had a plan for this fall back, but it is hard to know if they were forced by the strength of the attack, or if it was just their plan. It is not like ISIS to just give up an urban area without leaving a bunch of suicide fighters to delay and bleed the enemy, so it looks like they were forced by the artillery.
This first neighborhood captured was a tough to defend finger of the city stretched along the road out of town. After this, it opens up into a broader urban front.