The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Scottish jets hit Islamic State’s last Iraqi city
Mosul: Third day of fight to capture city from IS
Top guns from RAF Lossiemouth have left Islamic State at breaking point after a string of strikes on its last stronghold in Iraq. Typhoon jets from the Scottish base have helped drive the terrorists out of Mosul.
They used a guided bomb to explode a truck Islamic State had filled with bombs to the south of the city, and obliterated a stock pile of arms to the north.
A senior Iraqi general has called on Iraqis fighting for Islamic State in Mosul to surrender as a wide-scale operation to retake the militant-held city entered its third day.
Lt Gen Talib Shaghati said that up to 6,000 IS fighters are inside the city. He did not say how many of them are foreigners.
IS captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in a lightning advance in the summer of 2014.
The extremist group has suffered a string of defeats over the past year and Mosul is its last major urban bastion in Iraq.
So far, the militants have put up fierce resistance in villages surrounding the city, where most of the fighting has been concentrated.
IS has sent trucks loaded with explosives towards the front lines and fired mortars to slow the Iraqi forces’ advance. An Iraqi officer from the 9th Division said his troops were now around half a mile away from Hamdaniyah, a historically Christian town also known as Bakhdida, to the east of Mosul.
Over the past day, IS sent 12 car bombs, all of which were blown up before reaching their targets, he said, adding that Iraqi troops suffered a small number of casualties from the mortar rounds.
To the north, air strikes pounded Bashiqa as Kurdish forces fired mortar rounds from an area overlooking the IS-held town.
The top commander of US land forces in Iraq says US army Apache attack helicopters are striking IS targets in support of the push to retake Mosul.
Adding US attack helicopter crews to the unfolding combat is an extra element of risk for American troops.
Major General Gary Volesky said the Apaches were being used at night to strike targets from a distance.
He said the mere presence of the Apaches was a confidence booster for Iraqi soldiers.
Maj Gen Volesky, commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division, said he believes IS fighters in Mosul will put up a stiff defence in the city, but eventually lose and morph into an insurgency. The operation to retake Mosul is the largest launched by the Iraqi army since the 2003 US- led invasion. Some 25,000 troops, including Sunni tribal fighters, Kurdish forces known as the peshmerga and state-sanctioned Shi’ite militias,