Allies at ISIS' door in battle for Mosul
Kurds seize key villages as besieged fiends unleash gory ‘diversion’
Iraqi Kurdish forces pushed toward Mosul on Sunday, cordoning off eight villages and coming within 5½ miles of the northern city held by ISIS, which staged an attack in a western town hundreds of miles away in an apparent diversionary tactic.
The Kurdish forces, known as peshmerga, said in a statement that they cordoned off about 40 square miles and that they also secured a “significant stretch” of highway. They said that eight car bombs were destroyed in the operation, including three hit by US-led coalition aircraft, and that “dozens” of militants were killed.
The offensive near the town of Bashiqa came nearly a week after Iraq announced the start of the Mosul offensive.
Iraqi and Kurdish forces are ap- proaching from the north, east and south through a belt of mostly abandoned and heavily mined villages across the Ninevah plain.
Maj. Gen. Haider Fadhi, of Iraq’s special forces, said that they also took part in the operation and that Bashiqa was encircled.
ISIS has carried out attacks further afield that appear aimed at diverting attention from the operation.
Its militants stormed Rutba, a town in far western Iraq, unleashing three suicide car bombs that were blown up before hitting their targets, said the spokesman for the Joint Military Command, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool.
He said militants were killed but gave no exact figure and declined to say whether civilians or Iraqi forces were killed. He said the militants did not seize any government buildings and the situation “is under control.”
The ISIS-run Aamaq news agency had earlier said militants stormed Rutba from several directions.
Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the top US commander in Iraq, confirmed there had been an attack in Rutba and said he expects more such diversionary assaults.
ISIS carried out a large attack on the northern city of Kirkuk on Friday, in which more than 50 militants stormed government compounds and other targets, killing at least 80 people, mainly security forces.
The Mosul offensive involves more than 25,000 Iraqi ground forces as well as US-led coalition aircraft and advisers. It is expected to take weeks, if not months, to drive ISIS from Iraq’s second-largest city, 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 offen-
sive. Turkey’s prime minister, Binali Yildirim, said Sunday that Turkish tanks and artillery had begun aiding the Kurds in the Bashiqa offensive.
The presence of the Turkish troops has angered Iraq, which has called on them to withdraw. Turkey has refused, insisting it play a role in retaking Mosul from ISIS.
US Defense Secretary Ash Carter 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 him 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.
Carter praised the peshmerga, say- ing they “fight extremely well,” but he also acknowledged that they had suffered casualties.
Brig. Gen. Halgord Hekmet, a spokesman for the Kurdish forces, said 25 of their troops have been killed since the battle to retake Mosul began and a “large number” wounded. He said the peshmerga have had good coalition air support but could use more armored vehicles and roadside bomb detectors.
The UN agency for children, meanwhile, expressed concern over the more than 4,000 people it says have fled areas around Mosul since the operation began.
UNICEF’s Iraq representative, Peter Hawkins, said that in at least one refugee camp the conditions for children were “very, very poor.” He said UNICEF teams delivered water, sanitation and other supplies expected to last seven days.