Arrival: Islamic State fighters parade through Mosul in a commandeered Iraqi security forces armoured vehicle in June.

Baghdad: Islamic State jihadists in the Iraqi city of Mosul were preparing on Sunday night for an assault from government forces by cutting phone lines and banning residents from fleeing the city. 

Refugees and those still living in Iraq's second-largest city  told how conditions have deteriorated, as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) comes under increasing pressure. "You have to bring a guarantor to say you will come back in 10 days," said Mr Ghazwan, a Mosul resident recently arrived in Baghdad. He asked for his full name to be withheld. "If you don't come back, they are punished".

He said he discovered this new rule after a friend's mother died because he could not bring her to Baghdad for surgery. "People are trying to leave Mosul," he said. "They closed the hospitals because they have no electricity or water".

Shift: Residents flee Iraq's northern city of Mosul in July, walking towards nearby Erbil.

The decision to impose restrictions on residents who wish to leave the city had not been explained but appeared to be an attempt to stop mass flight. When Isil arrived in Mosul in June, many Sunni residents welcomed the group, thinking it would be preferable to the Shia-led government of the then prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, which they regarded as brutal and sectarian. One immediate advantage was that the bombings carried out by the jihadists stopped, and the roads were open and safe for the first time for years, Mr Ghazwan and other residents said.

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Minorities such as Christians mostly fled. Those Christians who did not were given a two-day ultimatum in July to convert or leave. Since then, the group has become unpopular even among the Sunni population by imposing harsh rules of conduct and by blowing up the city's best-known mosque, which was also the tomb of the Prophet Jonah, saying that worship at a shrine was idolatrous.

The subsequent hardships, such as the lack of electricity and the shutdown of the mobile phone network last month, have added to people's difficulties. A resident still in the city, who asked not to be named, said that the phones had been cut off as a security measure –Isil feared residents were phoning in jihadist positions to the government.

Isil has begun training young men and boys to join its forces, according to videos the group has released online.

Isil positions around the city have come under attack from air strikes by the United States and other members of the coalition. The Pentagon said the coalition had struck 20 Isil targets in Iraq, including in Mosul, last week. Iraqi media said 18 Isil fighters were killed in air strikes near Mosul Dam yesterday.

However, there was no sign of an immediate attack on the city. Government forces, backed by Shia militia, have made some gains in the past two weeks, including relieving a siege on Iraq's largest oil refinery at Baiji, between Baghdad and Mosul, but were not thought to have sufficient control of the road further north to launch an assault.

The United States has implied that it does not think the Iraqi army will be in a position to retake major Sunni Arab areas under Isil control for many months. The British Government, in announcing a further deployment of hundreds of troops to Baghdad and Erbil to train local forces over the weekend, also suggested that a delay was likely.

The Daily Telegraph