Iraqi troops and security forces edged closer to Mosul on two southern fronts on Sunday but a leader of the Shia militias newly participating in the offensive warned that the battle for Islamic State (IS)’s Iraq stronghold would be long and gruelling.
A military statement said the Army’s Ninth Armoured Division raised the Iraqi flag in the village of Ali Rash, about 7 km southeast of Mosul, after recapturing it from the militants. Further south, an Interior Ministry officer said security forces were advancing from the town of al-Shura, recaptured from the IS on Saturday, along the Tigris river valley towards Mosul, 30 km to the north.
Mission to seize Tal Afar
The Army and security forces, along with Kurdish peshmerga fighters, have been backed by U.S.-led air and ground support in their two-week-old campaign to crush the IS in the largest city of its self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
On Saturday thousands of Iranian-backed Iraqi Shia militia fighters, known as the Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) forces, joined the Mosul offensive, launching a campaign to take territory to the west of the city.
Their target is to seize the town of Tal Afar, 55 km (35 miles) west of Mosul, from IS. That would cut off any chance of the jihadists retreating into — or being reinforced from — their positions in neighbouring Syria.
Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga fighters are already driving Islamic State fighters back on the southern, eastern and northeastern approaches to Mosul.
“There is cooperation between ... the Army, federal police, Hashid and counter-terrorism [forces] and also the [local Sunni] tribes,” said Hadi al-Amiri, head of the Badr Organisation, the most powerful group within the Popular Mobilisation forces of fighters. — Reuters
