CLOSING IN ON ISIS
50 Iraqi villages liberated
Iraqi forces on Saturday swept into the villages around Mosul, retaking 50 towns in the bloody, brutal campaign to liberate the country’s last ISIS stronghold.
Roadside bombs, snipers and suicide truck bombs littered the approach to the city as troops freed now-sparsely populated towns like Hamdaniyah, which is also called Qaraqosh and Bakhdida, about 12 miles from the city.
More than a million people have been trapped under ISIS rule in Mosul, and could be forced to flee as the fighting intensifies.
ISIS terrorists overran Iraq’s second-largest city in 2014. The fight to free Mosul could take months, authorities said.
During an unannounced trip to Baghdad on Saturday, US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the battle for Mosul was on track and that America was starting to consider what role it would play when the city is finally liberated.
More than 4,800 American troops are in Iraq, and more than 100 US special-operations forces working with Iraqi units. Other US troops are playing a support role farther from the front lines.
“We need to think about the future. And we are,” said Carter, who said supporting Mosul after liberation was “a critical part of winning the peace.”
ISIS executed 284 men and boys last week as coalition forces moved in. They may have kidnapped 550 families from area villages to use as human shields, according to unconfirmed reports.
Among those trapped in Mosul are hundreds of girls and women of Yazidi descent who have been forced to work as ISIS sex slaves.
“Bomb us or rescue us but don’t leave us here!” one girl pleaded to Iraqi authorities, The Sunday Times of London reported.
The women and children — who number more than 3,200, according to United Nations estimates — have been captive for more than two years. Few have escaped.
“We hear the streets are mostly empty and the foreign fighters have fled. Iraqi ISIS are forcing kids to wear suicide vests and giving girls to their fighters so they don’t leave Mosul,” Yazidi activist Shaker Jeffrey told the paper.
Meanwhile, 80 security fighters were killed as ISIS launched a terrorist assault in Kirkuk, about 100 miles southeast of Mosul. Some on the ground considered the Kirkuk attack an attempt by ISIS to divert attention from the battle to free Mosul.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider alAbadi was quick to downplay any impact from the Kirkuk assault.
“Nearly all the terrorists who entered Kirkuk have been eliminated, and we have full control, except for maybe one area where they are being flushed out,” he said after meeting with Carter.
Amid the fighting in Kirkuk, 17 people in a funeral procession were killed by an airstrike in Daquq, a town to the south, the mayor said.
The US-led coalition was to blame for the airstrike, claimed Russian authorities who declared it a possible war crime.