Iraq’s leaders have promised to retake Mosul this year. Backed by U.S. airstrikes, the new offensive is said to involve over 5,000 ground troops, and is still ongoing, pushing deep into the area around ISIS’ largest city. Clashes are said to be ongoing.
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“The six persons were placed inside tanks containing boiling tar and the execution was carried out in one of ISIS headquarters at al-Shora”, a witness told Iraqi News.
Kurdistan TV said one of its reporters covering the offensive was killed and another was wounded when a mortar round was sacked into a village recently retaken by the peshmerga from ISIL. Rudaw, a local television network, showed footage of smoke rising from a village in the distance as armored vehicles pushed across a field.
A peshmerga commander said 11 villages had been taken from the ultra-hardline Sunni militants as the troops headed to Gwer, the target of the operation, 25 miles (40km) south-east of Mosul.
Tofiq added that a bridge, taken on Monday and leading to southeastern Mosul, could facilitate a troop buildup along an eastern Mosul front once it is repaired. The bridge leads over the Grand Zab river that ends by flowing into the Tigris.
“Iraqi Kurdish forces say they have retaken five villages east of the Islamic State-held city of Mosul in an operation launched early Sunday”. Currently, the metropolis is the largest population center under IS control with a pre-war population of almost 2 million people.
Iraq’s leaders have repeatedly promised that mosul will be retaken this year, though USA officials have said that timeline is unrealistic.
Mosul is the largest urban area under the control of ISIS, and the US envoy to the coalition fighting ISIS said preparations for the offensive on Mosul are “approaching the final phase”. Up to 1 million people may flee the danger, giving way to “a massive humanitarian problem”, the International Committee of the Red Cross said last month.
Hisham al-Hashimi, a consultant to the Baghdad government on the anti-Daesh campaign, recently said a large-scale offensive for the liberation of Mosul was slated for late September.
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The operation, which lasted just under 48 hours, is expected to be one of many aimed at encircling Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city and the IS group’s last major urban bastion in the country.
