Iraq fighters greeted by white flags as they approach Mosul

Telegraph:

Waving white flags and looking in equal measure relieved and bewildered, civilians crowded into battered trucks and sedans rumbled down the road from Bazwaya.

Earlier on Tuesday Iraqi troops based in this strategic village on the eastern outskirts of Mosul had launched their first assault on city limits, beginning what they called “the true liberation” of the city captured by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in 2014.

Inside Bazwaya, white flags still hung from buildings where they had been placed the day before by residents keen to show they welcomed the Iraqi forces as they advanced into the village.

On Tuesday, residents continued to leave, heading to Bartella, a small Christian town liberated by the Golden Division in October, and onto a newly built displacement camp at the nearby village of Khazer.

A shepherd held up the traffic as he led his flock of sheep away from the fighting. Taking no chances, he too wielded a white piece of cloth on the back of his donkey.

By the end of the day, troops from the Golden Division, part of the Iraq’s Counter Terrorism Service, had seized their first foothold inside the city at Gogjali, an industrial district of Mosul less than three miles from Bazwaya.

Elsewhere, Iraq’s Joint Operations Command said troops had "entered the Judaidat Al-Mufti area, within the left bank of the city of Mosul."
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The troops appear to be greeted as liberators as they move toward Mosul.

"We can see Daesh (Isil) fighters firing towards the Iraqi forces and moving in cars between the alleys of the neighbourhood. It's street fighting," one resident told Reuters.
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The ISIL fighters appear to be putting up a loose defense of the city.  I suspect they have an inadequate force to space ratio when it comes to controlling a city that large.