Iraq army, Kurd fighters slow advance to Mosul
Iraqi effort to retake Mosul from ISIS may last months.
Force moving to oust Islamic State captures 80 more square miles of territory as it consolidates gains.
The pace of operations slowed Tuesday in the fight to retake Mosul from the Islamic State group, as Iraqi forces advancing to the east and south of the city began pushing toward larger villages and encountering civilian populations.
Iraq’s Kurdish fighters, also known as the peshmerga, largely paused their advance, according to commanders stationed along the front to Mosul’s east, consolidating gains from the previous day.
Iraqi army forces advanced to the south and east of Mosul, reaching the outskirts al-Hamdaniyah, a historically Christian town also known as Bakhdida and Qaraqosh that was once home to tens of thousands, east of Mosul. On the southern front, Iraq’s federal police pushed toward up to the town of al-Houd, still home to hundreds of people, according to estimates from the United Nations.
Iraqi army Lt. Col. Mohammed Shaker said al-Hamdaniyah had been surrounded and his forces had retaken six other villages over the past two days.
More than 25,000 troops have mobilized for the Mosul fight, a massive operation that’s expected to take weeks, if not months. Iraq’s second-largest city is still home to more than a million people and humanitarian groups have warned that up to a million could be forced to flee, unleashing a large-scale humani- tarian crisis.
“The operation is going according to schedule and we have been very successful,” said Iraqi army Maj. Gen. Qas- sim Al-Maliki. “The enemy is pulling back but they are leaving small mobile units behind, each composed of three to four persons, and we are mopping them up.”
On Monday, Kurdish forces retook some 80 square miles, according to Massoud Bar- zani, the president of Iraq’s Kurdish region.
Peshmerga commanders estimated they retook nine villages and pushed the front line back five miles. The front line east of Mosul is now some 20 miles from the city.
On Tuesday, those front lines were largely quiet, a day after Iraqi Kurdish forces advanced amid a barrage of U.S.-led airstrikes and heavy artillery.
“We are just holding our positions,” said Col. Khathar Sheikhan of the pesh- merga.“The Iraqi army will now advance past our arenas of control.”
Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said more than 100 U.S. troops are embedded with Iraqi forces. Davis said the Americans are “well back” from the front lines as they advise the Iraqis and perform tasks such as relaying information about potential airstrike targets.