Battle for Mosul: Iraqi forces 3 miles off 'IS capital'
Kurdish fighters said they had taken the town of Bashiqa near Mosul from Islamic State yesterday as coalition forces pressed their offensive against the jihadists' last stronghold in Iraq.
Masoud Barzani, President of the Iraqi Kurdish region, told US Defense Secretary Ash Carter that the Kurds had succeeded in liberating Bashiqa from Islamic State.
An almost 30,000 strong coalition of US-supported Kurdish fighters, Shia militias, Sunni tribal fighters and the Iraqi army have edged their way closer to Mosul on three fronts since the much-heralded offensive to liberate it began on Monday.
Following the new push by the peshmerga near the town of Bashiqa and the retaking of Christian villages to the east of the city, in some places the frontline is now just three miles (five kilometres) away from the city's outskirts, Reuters reported.
Islamic State has staged attacks apparently aimed at distracting the advancing forces.
They hit the city of Kirkuk on Friday and yesterday they attacked Rutba, a town 360 km (225 miles) west of Baghdad, where they killed at least seven policemen, according to a police source.
The mayor, Imad al-Dulaimi, said the insurgents attacked during the night and gained entry to the town by coordinating with sleeper cells there. About 30 insurgents skirmished with tribal fighters and security forces before vanishing.
Townsend said Islamic State had staged what he called a complex attack in Rutba, which was being dealt with by Iraqi forces. The attack was intended "to try to draw our attention from Mosul", he said.
In another an attempt to repel the offensive against Mosul, Islamic State also set fire to a sulphur plant near the city. Up to 1,000 people were treated in hospital after inhaling toxic fumes.
Kirkuk, a major oil-producing centre, was under curfew and there were reports of continuing sporadic clashes yesterday.
Bashiqa's capture, if confirmed, would mark the removal of one more obstacle on the road to the northern Iraqi city.
The offensive that started on Monday to capture Mosul is backed by a US-led coalition. It is expected to become the biggest battle in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003.
An Iraqi forces, joined by US special forces and under American, French and British air cover, is ready to push into Mosul after recapturing Falluja and Ramadi, west of Baghdad, and seizing the Sunni stronghold of Tikrit in central Iraq.
Coalition officials have said the offensive is going well, but that it will take a long time to recapture Mosul, which has a civilian population of 1.5 million.
Between 4,000 and 8,000 Islamic State fighters have rigged the city with explosives, built oil-filled moats, dug tunnels, and trenches and are feared to be ready to use civilians as human shields.
However, Karim Sinjari, the interior minister of the Kurdish regional government, told Reuters in an interview that Islamic State fighters will put up a fierce fight because of Mosul's symbolic value for the hardline Sunni jihadis.
"If they resist in the city, especially in old Mosul, it will be a big fight ... The roads are very thin, very narrow. You can't have vehicles, you can't have tanks. So it will be a fight, person by person," he said.
Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate and himself the leader of the world's Muslims at a Mosul mosque after seizing Iraq's second largest city in 2014.
"If Mosul is finished the caliphate they announced is finished. If they lose in Mosul, they will have no place, just Raqqa," Sinjari told Reuters in an interview.
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