Wave of strikes hits Iraq's Mosul

Iraqi forces advancing on Mosul faced stiff resistance from the Islamic State group yesterday despite the US-led coalition unleashing an unprecedented wave of air strikes to support the week-old offensive.

Federal forces and Kurdish peshmerga fighters were moving forward in several areas, AFP correspondents on various fronts said, but the jihadists were hitting back with shelling, sniper fire, suicide car bombs and booby traps.

IS has also attempted to draw attention away from losses around Mosul with attacks on Iraqi forces elsewhere in the country, the latest coming on Sunday near the Jordanian border.

Following a weekend visit to Iraq by US Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter, American officials said the coalition was providing the most air support yet to the operation.

"One week into Mosul operation, all objectives met thus far, and more coalition air strikes than any other 7-day period of war against ISIL (IS)," Brett McGurk, the top US envoy to the 60-nation coalition, wrote on social media.

"There were 32 strikes with 1,776 munitions delivered against Daesh (IS) targets for the week of October 17-October 23," the spokesman for the coalition, Colonel John Dorrian, told AFP.

He said those strikes had destroyed 136 IS fighting positions, 18 tunnels and 26 car bombs.

The offensive, launched on October 17, aims to retake towns and villages surrounding Mosul before elite troops will breach the city and engage die-hard jihadists in street-to-street fighting.

'GOOD DEFENCES'

On the eastern side of Mosul, federal troops were battling IS yesterday in Qaraqosh, which used to be the largest Christian town in the country.

Army forces entered the town for the third day running but armoured convoys deployed around it were met with shelling from inside, an AFP correspondent reported.

Federal forces also scored gains on the southern front, where they have been making quick progress, taking one village after another as they work their way up the Tigris Valley.

On the northern front, Kurdish peshmerga forces were closing in on the IS-held town of Bashiqa.

Turkey, which has a base in the area, said Sunday it had provided artillery support following a request from the peshmerga.

The presence of Turkish troops on Iraqi soil is deeply unpopular in Baghdad and the Joint Operations Command yesterday vehemently denied any Turkish participation.

But AFP reporters near Bashiqa said artillery fire coming from the Turkish base had been visible on several occasions since the start of operations a week ago.

While an increasingly pragmatic IS has tended in recent months to relinquish some of its positions to avoid taking too many casualties, US officials said the group was mounting a spirited defence of Mosul.

If IS loses Mosul in Iraq, only Raqa in Syria will remain as the last major city under the jihadists' control in either country.

"They have made a very good job of preparing their defences around the city," one US military official told reporters during Carter's visit.

The official said IS's strategy appeared to be to trade "non-necessary space" around Mosul for casualties among federal and Kurdish ranks.

The coalition estimates the number of IS fighters defending Mosul -- the city where IS supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed a "caliphate" two years ago -- at 4,000 to 7,000.

UN PLAN FOR DISPLACED

The UN refugee agency is preparing to receive 150,000 Iraqis fleeing fighting around the Islamic State group-held city of Mosul within the next few days, its chief said yesterday.

"The preparations are proceeding well... UNHCR is going to have in two or three days 30,000 tents in Iraq, enough for 150,000 people," Filippo Grandi told reporters in Jordan after visiting Iraq.

Grandi said a key issue was "to find enough sites to be able to receive this huge mass of people should it come out of Mosul".

"Negotiations in this respect are going on with the government of Iraq and with the Kurdish regional government," he said.

So far, "the outflow of displaced people is not yet from the city of Mosul but from the outskirts" where there has been fighting, Grandi said.

"We have about 7,500 displaced people that have moved from the outskirts of Mosul to other locations that have been assisted and we have perhaps around 1,000 that have crossed into Syria," he said.