![]() This is where the Mosul battle falls on the spectrum.Īfter that would be major urban operations with limited objectives like regime change or eliminating an enemy capability coming from within an urban area, such as short-range rockets or cross-border tunneling operations. Sliding along the scale, next would come major city attacks during limited, non-nuclear conflict, where at least one combatant follows international humanitarian law and seeks to minimize the impact of the battle on protected populations and sites. In total war, tactical nuclear weapons and the complete destruction of cities through aerial bombardment are both possibilities. This is when two combatants, possibly near-peer militaries, wage war in urban terrain with little regard for any humanitarian laws of war or concerns about collateral damage. If one were to develop a scale of urban conflict, on one extreme end would be total war. Modern urban warfare can entail many types of missions along the spectrum of military operations. In other words, the limitations characterizing the conduct of urban warfare must be overcome. This type of high-cost, high-risk operation-the city attack-will continue to increase in frequency unless the rules of modern urban warfare are addressed in a deliberate manner. The nine-month battle is reported to have killed over ten thousand civilians, caused an estimated two billion dollars in damage to the city, created ten million tons of debris, and displaced over 1.8 million of the city’s residents. The battle saw a force of over one hundred thousand attacking somewhere between five and twelve thousand enemy fighters defending the city. The operation was the largest conventional land battle since the attack on Baghdad during the US-led invasion in 2003 and one of the most destructive urban fights in modern history involving Western forces. From Octoto January 4, 2017, US-backed Iraqi security forces conducted a full-scale city attack to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State.
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