BAGHDAD —Iraqi troops who seized a hospital deep inside Mosul believed to be used as a Daesh base have retreated after a fierce counterattack, giving up some of their biggest gains in a hard-fought seven-week campaign to recapture the city.

The soldiers seized Salam Hospital, less than 1.5km from the Tigris River running through central Mosul, on Tuesday but pulled back the next day after they were hit by six suicide car bombs and “heavy enemy fire”, according to a statement by the US-led coalition supporting Iraqi forces.

Coalition warplanes, at Iraq’s request, also struck a building inside the hospital complex from which the militants were firing machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades, it said.

Tuesday’s rapid advance into the Wahda neighbourhood where the hospital is located marked a change of tactics after a month of gruelling fighting in east Mosul, in which the army has sought to capture and clear neighbourhoods block by block.

The soldiers are part of a US-backed 100,000-strong coalition of Iraqi forces including the army, federal police, Kurdish peshmerga fighters and mainly Shiite Popular Mobilisation forces battling to crush Daesh in Mosul.

Defeating the militants in their Iraq stronghold would mark a major step in rolling back the caliphate declared by the extremists in parts of Syria and Iraq when they took over Mosul in mid-2014.

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