Iraqi special forces neared the eastern city limits of Mosul on Monday, tightening the noose as the offensive to retake the Islamic State group stronghold entered its third week.
Forces from the elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) faced mortar fire as they pushed from the Christian town of Bartalla towards Mosul’s eastern suburbs, AFP correspondents at the
front said.
As an aircraft struck a suspected ISIS mortar position in the distance, a convoy of Humvees sprayed gunfire across the arid plain at an industrial area held by jihadists.
lieutenant Colonel Muntadhar al-Shimmari said CTS had recaptured Bazwaya, one of two ISIS-held villages that had been standing between Iraqi forces and the eastern edges of Mosul.
“Tonight, if everything is secured, we will be 700 metres from Mosul,” Shimmari said.
CTS forces had entered the second village, Gogjali, and were battling to retake it, Staff lt General Abdelwahab al-Saadi, a senior CTS commander, told AFP by telephone.
He denied reports that Iraqi forces had entered the Al- Karama area — about 2.5 kms from Gogjali — inside Mosul.
Backed by air and ground support from a US-led coalition, tens of thousands of Iraqi fighters are converging on Mosul on different fronts, in the country’s biggest military operation in years.
On the northern and eastern sides of Mosul, the extremist group’s last major bastion in Iraq, peshmerga forces from the autonomous Kurdish region recently took several villages and consolidated their positions.
To the south of the city, federal forces, backed by coalition artillery units stationed in the main staging base of Qayyarah, have been pushing north.
They have the most ground to cover and are still some distance from the southern limits of Mosul.
Paramilitary forces from the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation), an umbrella organisation dominated by Iran- backed Shiite militia, opened another front over the weekend.