EAST AND NORTH OF MOSUL, Iraq, (Reuters) – The offensive to seize back Mosul from Islamic State is going faster than planned, Iraq’s prime minister said yesterday, as Iraqi and Kurdish forces launched a new military operation to clear villages on the city’s outskirts.
Howitzer and mortar fire started at dawn, hitting a group of villages held by Islamic State about 10-20 km (6-12 miles) from Mosul, while helicopters flew overhead, according to Reuters reporters at two frontline locations north and east of Mosul. To the sound of machine gun fire and explosions, dozens of black Humvees of the elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS), mounted with machine guns, headed towards Bartella, an abandoned Christian village just east of Mosul.
Militants were using suicide car-bombs, roadside bombs and snipers to resist the attack, and were pounding surrounding areas with mortars, a CTS commander said.
Hours later, the head of Iraq’s Special Forces, Lieutenant General Talib Shaghati, told reporters at a command centre near the frontline that troops had surrounded Bartella and entered the centre of the village. Two soldiers were hurt and none killed, and they had killed at least 15 militants, he said.
“After Bartella is Mosul, God willing.”
A cloud of black smoke wreathed some frontline villages, probably caused by oil fires, a tactic the militants use to escape air surveillance.
Iraqi state TV later quoted a CTS spokesman as saying about 80 insurgents were killed in fighting in Bartella and 11 suicide car-bombs destroyed.
A U.S. service member also died on Thursday from wounds sustained in an improvised explosive device blast in northern Iraq, the U.S.-led military coalition said in a statement.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a U.S. defence official said the incident took place near Mosul. Roughly 5,000 U.S. forces are in Iraq. More than 100 of them are embedded with Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces involved with the Mosul offensive, advising commanders and helping them ensure coalition air power hits the right targets, officials say.
The fighting around Mosul has also forced 5,640 people to flee their homes in the last three days, mostly in the past 24 hours, the International Organization for Migration said on Thursday.
Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, addressing anti-Islamic state coalition allies meeting in Paris by a video link, said: “The forces are pushing towards the town more quickly than we thought and more quickly than we had programmed.”
