Iraqis press toward Mosul, face questions about airstrike

BARTELLA, Iraq — U.S.-backed Iraqi forces fought their way inside two villages Monday as they crept closer to Mosul a week into an offensive to retake the Islamic State-held city, but they also faced questions over a suspected airstrike on a mosque that killed 13 people.

Iraqi special forces shelled militant positions before dawn near Bartella, a historically Christian town east of Mosul that they had retaken last week. With patriotic music blaring from loudspeakers on their Humvees, they then pushed into the village of Tob Zawa, about nine kilometres from Mosul, amid heavy clashes.

Until now, most of the fighting has been in largely uninhabited towns and villages, but the special forces found more than 70 civilians sheltering in Tob Zawa. They will encounter many more civilians as they get closer to Mosul, still home to more than one million people.

Abdeljabar Antar, who had remained in Tob Zawa with his wife and four children, said the IS militants had included foreign fighters “who spoke languages I don’t know — Russians, Pakistanis.” They had forced children to go to religious school and military training, and everyone had to attend prayers five times a day, he added.

In the days before the offensive, Antar said the village ran low on food and supplies, and that residents had to get permission from IS to leave.

“I hope life will return to the way it was before 2014,” he said, referring to the summer when IS militants swept across northern and central Iraq, capturing Mosul and surrounding towns.

The Iraqi Federal Police, a military-style force, pushed into a second village in the Shura district south of Mosul, where they fired a large anti-aircraft gun and rocket-propelled grenades. They later appeared to have secured the village, a cluster of squat homes on a desert plain, and handed out water and other aid to civilians.

The U.S.-led coalition said it had carried out six airstrikes on Sunday near Mosul, destroying 19 fighting positions and 17 vehicles, as well as rocket and mortar launchers, artillery and tunnels.

Human Rights Watch called for an investigation into last week’s purported airstrike in northern Iraq that hit the women’s section of a Shiite mosque in the town of Daquq.

The strike happened amid a large Islamic State assault on nearby Kirkuk that appeared aimed at diverting attention from the fight for Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.