70pc of east Mosul retaken
Iraqi forces have retaken around 70 percent of eastern Mosul from Islamic State militants and expect to reach the river bisecting the city in the coming days, Iraq's joint operations commander told Reuters.
Lieutenant General Talib Shaghati, who is also head of the elite counter-terrorism service (CTS) spearheading the campaign to retake the northern city, said the cooperation of residents was helping them advance against Islamic State.
In its 12th week, the offensive has gained momentum since Iraqi forces backed by a US-led coalition renewed their push for the city a week ago, clearing several more eastern districts despite fierce resistance.
Meanwhile, Iraqi forces launched an offensive against the Islamic State group near the Syrian border yesterday, piling further pressure on the jihadists' crumbling "caliphate".
Baghdad and its allies also turned up the heat on IS in its last remaining Iraqi stronghold of Mosul, where the US-led coalition said it had doubled the number of its advisors.
"A military operation has begun in the western areas of Anbar (province) to liberate them from Daesh," said Lieutenant General Qassem Mohammedi, head of Jazeera Operations Command, using an Arabic acronym for IS.
He said the operation was led by the army's 7th division, police, and fighters from local tribes that have opposed the jihadists, with aerial backing from the coalition.
IS has lost more than half of the territory it once controlled in Iraq and the loss of Mosul would deal a major blow to the "caliphate" it proclaimed there in June 2014.
Meanwhile, the United Nations on Wednesday said more than 2,000 Iraqis a day are fleeing Mosul.
More than 125,000 people have been displaced out of a population of roughly 1.5 million, but the numbers have increased by nearly 50 percent to 2,300 daily from 1,600 over the last few days, the UN refugee agency said.
The humanitarian situation was "dire", with food stockpiles dwindling and the price of staples spiralling, boreholes drying up or turning brackish from over-use and camps and emergency sites to the south and east reaching maximum capacity, it said.
Most of the fleeing civilians are from the eastern districts but people from the besieged west, still under the militants' control, are increasingly attempting to escape, scaling bridges bombed by the coalition and crossing the Tigris by boat.
Meanwhile, a car bomb in eastern Baghdad claimed by Islamic State killed six civilians and wounded 15 on Thursday, police and medics said.
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