With control over the eastern half of Mosul and parts of southwestern Mosul, Iraq is in sore need of some bridges. The good news is, troops today captured their second “bridge” today. The bad news is that, like the first one, the US blew it up a long time ago.
This has focus shifting on the open-ended US training operation in Iraq, with trainers now teaching Iraqi troops how to cobble together floating bridges good enough to get them across a river, a skill that seems increasingly essential in Mosul, which is both bisected by a large river, and has no remaining bridges.
One might’ve thought the US should’ve focused more heavily on the bridging training before the invasion, particularly since US warplanes almost immediately destroyed every single bridge in Mosul during the invasion, leaving open the question of how Iraqi troops were supposed to get across the river.
So far Iraqi troops have been travelling way down river and crossing there, and then fighting their way back up the other side to try to get to western Mosul. Though this eventually got them into the city, it still leaves troops on both sides of the city disconnected from one another.