Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces yesterday attacked an Islamic State (IS)-held town northeast of Mosul, trying to clear a pocket of militants outside the city while Iraqi troops wage a fierce urban war with the militants in its eastern neighborhoods.
As the campaign against IS’ Iraqi stronghold entered its fourth week, fighters across the border launched an offensive in the Syrian half of the group’s self-declared caliphate, targeting its base in the city of Raqqa.
The assault on Raqqa, held by the IS group for nearly three years, will be spearheaded by armed groups backed by the US and supported by US-led airstrikes.
Photo: Reuters
However, unlike in Iraq where the Iraqi army is leading the assault, it not being coordinated with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or the Syrian army.
In Bashiqa, about 15km from Mosul, the first waves of a 2,000-strong Peshmerga force entered the town on foot and in armored vehicles or Humvees.
Artillery earlier pounded the town, which lies on the Nineveh plains at the foot of a mountain.
“Our aim is to take control and clear out all the Daesh [IS] militants,” Lieutenant-Colonel Safeen Rasoul said. “Our estimates are there are about 100 still left and 10 suicide cars.”
IS fighters have sought to slow the offensive on their Mosul stronghold with waves of suicide car bomb attacks. Iraqi commanders say there have been 100 on the eastern front and 140 in the south.
A top Kurdish official on Sunday said the militants had also deployed drones strapped with explosives, long-range artillery shells filled with chlorine gas and mustard gas and trained snipers.
As a Peshmerga column yesterday moved into Bashiqa, a loud explosion rocked the convoy, and two large plumes of white smoke could be seen just 15m away.
A Peshmerga officer said two suicide car bombs had tried to hit the advancing force.
“They are surrounded... If they want to surrender, OK. If they don’t, they will be killed,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Qandeel Mahmoud, standing next to a Humvee, supported by a cane he said he has needed since he was wounded in the leg by two suicide car bombers four months ago.
In eastern districts of Mosul, which Iraqi special forces broke into last week, officers say IS fighters melted into the population, ambushing and isolating troops in what the special forces spokesman called the world’s “toughest urban warfare.”
The Mosul campaign, the most complex military operation in Iraq in a decade, brings together a force of about 100,000 soldiers, security forces, Shiite militias and Peshmerga, backed by a US-led coalition, to crush the Sunni militants.
Across the border, US-backed Syrian fighters have launched their own campaign, called Euphrates Anger, to recapture Raqqa.
Twin offensives on Raqqa and Mosul could bring to an end the self-styled caliphate declared by IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from a Mosul mosque in 2014.
Baghdadi, whose whereabouts are unknown but who is believed to be in northern Iraq close to the Syrian border, has told his followers there can be no retreat in a “total war” with their enemies.
To the south of Mosul, security forces said they had recaptured and secured the town of Hammam al-Alil from IS fighters, who they said had kept thousands of residents as human shields as well as marching many others alongside retreating militants towards Mosul as cover from airstrikes.
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