A crowd of Iraqi officers looked out at the Tigris River Friday from a balcony of Mosul's Nineveh International hotel. The progress of Iraqi forces, halting at first, sped up this month as they closed in on the river that roughly divides Mosul into eastern and western halves. Within a few days Iraqi troops retook the city's university, the Nineveh International hotel and more than half dozen eastern neighborhoods. But that number doesn't include civilians who have died inside Mosul or those injured and treated within the city. Iraqi troops have also experienced similarly high casualty rates; Irbil hospital officials and Iraqi medics working inside Mosul estimate that more than 1,600 Iraqi troops have been injured or killed during the Mosul operation.

Source: ABC News January 21, 2017 19:28 UTC