Recapturing the town of Shirqat posed another blow to IS militants who since late a year ago have suffered major battlefield losses, shrinking the areas the extremists had controlled in western and northern Iraq since a mid-2014 blitz.
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Once the push is launched, a coalition of heterogenous and sometimes rival Iraqi forces will have to fight through IS defences – in some cases over distances of dozens of kilometres (miles) from their current positions – to reach the city.
In a televised statement on state TV, the spokesman for the Joint Military Command, Brig. USA troops went out to examine the projectile after it landed.
The head of the Salahuddin provincial council, Ahmed al-Karim, said that government forces control up 70 percent of the town.
Iraqi forces have been moving northwards from Baghdad for nearly two years, gradually retaking areas over which Daesh declared its “caliphate” in June 2014.
Several hundred USA troops are working with Iraqi partners to strengthen the airfield ahead of a push on the IS stronghold of Mosul.
The advance on Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city which fell in 2014 to the militant group, could begin as soon as next month.
The city is home to the 3rd millennium ancient city of Ashur in Shirqat.
The town lies on the west bank of the Tigris river in Salaheddin province, 260 kilometres (160 miles) northwest of Baghdad and around 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of Mosul. The terrorist group also controls the city of Tel Afar, west of Mosul towards the Syrian border. Government troops and allied Sunni paramilitary tribal fighters, covered by US-led coalition and Iraqi aircraft, entered the central part of Shirqat, some 280 km from capital Baghdad, seized the local government compound, the main hospital building and police headquarters, Xinhua news agency quoted a source as saying on a condition of anonymity.
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In the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s forces used mustard gas, sarin, and other forms of chemical warfare against Iran and against Iraqi rebels.
