The Guardian reports: Mosul residents who have fled Islamic State say a homegrown resistance, raised over the past six months, has made plans to launch coordinated attacks against the group as Iraqi and Kurdish forces close in – a move that could prove influential in the final battle for the city.

Though a decisive clash still appears to be weeks away – by some estimates up to two months – the residents say an underground movement has organised into cells that are prepared to oppose Isis when they receive sufficient support.

Two members of a family who arrived at a peshmerga checkpoint in the north of the country this week told the Guardian that they had received training on how to organise in secret and said tribes in other parts of the city were also ready to revolt. Their family was taken to Irbil after less than a day in a holding centre set up for those fleeing Isis’s last urban stronghold in Iraq.

“There are people who support us, but we can’t say who,” said one of the men on Wednesday. “It isn’t big, but it is happening.”

Rumours of a locally led revolt against Isis have been rife since late in the summer and have intensified as the battle draws nearer. [Continue reading…]