Kurdish fighters press close to Mosul

than 25,000 Iraqi ground forces as well as U.S.-led coalition aircraft and advisers. It is expected to take weeks, if not months, to drive IS from Iraq’s second-largest city, which is home to more than a million civilians.

Bashiqa is close to a military base of the same name where some 500 Turkish troops are training Sunni and Kurdish fighters for the Mosul offensive. Turkey’s prime minister, Binali Yildirim, told reporters Sunday that Turkish tanks and artillery had begun aiding the Kurdish forces in the Bashiqa offensive.

The presence of the Turkish troops has angered Iraq, which says it never gave them permission to enter the country and has called on them to withdraw. Turkey has refused, insisting that it play a role in retaking Mosul from IS.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter has visited both countries in recent days and was in the Kurdish regional capital, Irbil, on Sunday.

After meeting with Turkish leaders, Carter announced an “agreement in principle” for Turkey to have a role in the operation. But Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told Carter on Saturday that Mosul was an “Iraqi battle.”

The forces taking part in the Mosul offensive include Iraqi troops, the peshmerga, Sunni tribal fighters and state-sanctioned Shiite militias. Many fear the operation could heighten tensions between Iraq’s different communities, which are allied against IS but divided over a host of other issues, including the fate of territories near mostly Sunni Mosul that are claimed by the largely autonomous Kurdish region and the central government.

Carter praised the peshmerga, saying they “fight extremely well,” but he also acknowledged that they had suffered casualties.

MARKO DROBNJAKOVIC/ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS People cross a street Sunday in Qayyarah, Iraq, about 30 miles south of Mosul, as the sun is eclipsed by toxic clouds. Islamic State fighters had torched a sulfur plant south of Mosul, creating a chemical plume.