Mosul battle 'no picnic'
Says Iraqi Shia commander
Iraqi troops and security forces edged closer to Mosul on two southern fronts yesterday but a leader of the Shia militias newly participating in the offensive warned that the battle for Islamic State's Iraq stronghold would be long and gruelling.
A military statement said the army's Ninth Armoured Division raised the Iraqi flag in the village of Ali Rash, about 7 km (4 miles) southeast of Mosul, after recapturing it from the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim militants.
Further south, an Interior Ministry officer said security forces were advancing from the town of al-Shura, recaptured from Islamic State on Saturday, along the Tigris river valley towards Mosul 30 km (20 miles) to the north.
The army and security forces, along with Kurdish peshmerga fighters, have been backed by US-led air and ground support in their two-week-old campaign to crush Islamic State in the largest city of its self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
Their battle for Mosul, still home to 1.5 million residents, could be one of the toughest battles in a decade of turmoil since the 2003 overthrow of then-President Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, brought Iraq's majority Shias to power.
On Saturday thousands of Iranian-backed Iraqi Shia militia fighters, known as the Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) forces, joined the Mosul offensive, launching a campaign to take territory to the west of the city.
Their target is to seize the town of Tal Afar, 55 km (35 miles) west of Mosul, from Islamic State. That would cut off any chance of the jihadists retreating into - or being reinforced from - their positions in neighbouring Syria.
Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga fighters are already driving Islamic State fighters back on the southern, eastern and northeastern approaches to Mosul.
"There is cooperation between ... the army, federal police, Hashid and counter-terrorism (forces) and also the (local Sunni) tribes," said Hadi al-Amiri, head of the Badr Organisation, the most powerful group within the Popular Mobilisation forces.