Kurdish forces, backed by the US-led coalition and Iraqi soldiers had launched a major offensive on Sunday to retake Mosul from the militants. The Islamic State responded with mortar strikes and at least two suicide auto bombings which have slowed the advances.
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“Peshmerga forces have managed to make progress in the Al-Kuwair and Al-Khazar areas, retaking three villages southeast of Mosul”, a peshmerga captain told Anadolu Agency on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to media.
A small unit of Kurdish peshmerga forces huddled in an abandoned home on the edge of Qarqashah, one of a dozen villages east of the Iraqi city of Mosul that the peshmerga captured from the Islamic State group this week.
Kuridsh forces on Monday liberated a handful of villages in northern Iraq from Islamic State control and reached a key strategic bridge on the Gwer front as part of ongoing offensives against the militants.
As the campaign to recapture Mosul takes shape aid groups are warning that more than one million people could be displaced by the fighting.
Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, has been under IS control since June 2014.
With a pre-war population of almost 2 million, it is the largest urban center under the militants’ control and its fall would mark the effective defeat of Islamic State in Iraq, according to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has said he aims to retake it this year.
The advances began Sunday with Kurdish forces securing Kanhash, which will give the forces an advantage over the IS held positions their Iraqi capital. Pashmerga forces were also being hit in the gunfire, he added.
The objective was part of an aggressive campaign to capture the militants’ de facto capital Mosul in Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi confirmed that the future is to draw closer to the final phase of fighting.
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He said the planning included humanitarian considerations. So far over 3.4-million people have been forced to flee across the country of Iraq.
