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This is his mother. for god sake, help me carry her, he cries. they try running to the closest point in the narrow street a vehicle can reach. stop the blood loss, they plead. it is unclear if the boy survived. even when this dust is cleared of isis, the killing won t stop. the private hell of memories won t suddenly be washed away. oh, my gosh. you don t often think of the children until you see their faces and how much they re struggling and what the people there are faced with every single day. this is an important reminder, mosul may fall, may leave isis hands, but the struggles and the tribulations of the people there, they will not end today, tomorrow, or the next day. and they re going to need help, a lot of help going forward. our thanks to nick paton walsh. and thanks to our international ....
This is a struggle to the death. now they have no other option than to fight, he tells me, either that or surrender, but they ve chosen to fight. a few areas in isis hands are under constant intense bombard mtd, but in there, hundreds of thousands of desperate residents. as the civil yaps flee, isis retreats, because those innocent helpless people are their only protection. safe ground is still far from the world. children, the elderly, so many people, the faces of the many civilians caught in the ....
Tactical strikes and smoke rounds. as the bombardment continues, all eyes are now on the remaining 25% of western mosul steel and isis hands. that s where some 400,000 civilians were being used as human shields. a few miles east of the city, christians celebrated easter in churches taken back from isis. christianity here is nearly 200e been steadily dwindling. translator: destruction and burnt houses. we cannot leave here. it needs to be rebuilt and we need security because we don t trust the people around here. there might be even stronger groups in the future. it s bigger as they pray for peace and victory in this bloodied battle, they also pray their city might one day rise again. the iraqi military is being far more cautious about giving a time frame for victory. they said a few more weeks, isis ....
all of us in america have generally paid for our gas and oil all along, and i m sure that we will continue to do so in the future. we are not in iraq to seize anybody s oil. mattis is working on options to accelerate the fight against isis for president trump to review at the end of the month. the key goals, get mosul and raqqa syria out of isis hands. but mattis, an iraq veteran himself, not exactly committing on more troops or weapons to the fight. we owe some degree of confidentiality on exactly how we are going to do that and the sequencing of that fight. so that we don t expose to the enemy what it is that we have in mind in terms of the timing of the operations. the pentagon is looking at several ideas, including arming kurdish rebels, which turkey opposes, and even putting u.s. conventional troops on the ground inside syria. ....
announcer: this is cnn breaking news. we begin with breaking news. we are following out of iraq tonight. it is 2:00 in the morning in mosul, iraq, and that s where we re focused at this hour. the offensive to liberate mosul from isis control is now underway. that word from iraq s prime minister, al abadi, in a televised statement moments ago. to give you a sense of the importance of mosul in the fight, mosul has been in isis hands for the last two years. it is the terror group s last stronghold within iraq. militia group and iraqi forces have been signaling a move to retake this city for days now. this was imminent. our ben wedeman is near mosul. arwa damon, as well. cnn military analyst also joins us. let s begin with ben wedeman. ben, talk about how critical this is. because just a few moments ago, you said that losing mosul could ....