Kurdish Peshmerga forces fighting Islamic State in Iraq have taken control of a strategic river crossing point near the group’s de facto Iraqi capital, Mosul.
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According to a Reuters report, the offensive began after the coalition air strikes and heavy shelling against IS (Daesh) forces.
The militants fought back, firing mortars at the advancing troops and detonating at least two auto bombs.
Mosul is the largest urban center under the militants’ control, and had a pre-war population of almost 2 million.
Iraq’s leaders have repeatedly promised that mosul will be retaken this year, though US officials have said that timeline is unrealistic. In July the Iraqi army captured the Qayyara airfield which sits 60 kilometers from the ISIS capital and is expected to be used as a staging ground for the final assault towards retaking the ISIS Iraqi capital.
Kurdistan TV is a Kurdish satellite television station which belongs to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), led by the regional President Masoud Barzani.
Backed by United States 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.
Mosul, 400km north of Baghdad and Iraq’s second-largest city, has been held by ISIL since 2014. A Kurdish commander told the BBC that more than 5,000 troops were involved in the latest operation.
Iraqi forces and the Kurdish troops are seeking to encircle Mosul, which has been under IS control for more than two years.
The Kurdish advance east of Mosul on Sunday is part of shaping operations that have been taking place on several fronts for weeks. Last month, the United Nations warned that the military operation to retake the city could displace 3.4 million people and cause a humanitarian crisis.
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Up to a million people are trapped in the Islamic State-controlled city of Mosul.
