BATTLE FOR MOSUL RAGES
People watch a burning oil well Sunday in Qayyarah, about 31 miles south of Mosul, Iraq. Islamic State fighters torched a sulfur plant south of Mosul, sending a cloud of toxic fumes into the air that mingled with oil wells the militants had lit on fire to create a smokescreen.
KHAZER, Iraq — Iraqi Kurdish forces pushed toward Mosul on Sunday, cordoning off eight villages and coming within 5½ miles of the northern city held by the Islamic State group, which staged an attack in a western town hundreds of miles away in an apparent diversionary tactic.
The Kurdish forces, known as peshmerga, said the area they cordoned off measures around 38 square miles, and that they also secured a “significant stretch” of highway. The statement said eight car bombs were destroyed in the operation, including three by U.S.-led coalition aircraft, and “dozens” of militants were killed.
The offensive near the town of Bashiqa came nearly a week after Iraq announced the start of the long-awaited Mosul offensive. Iraqi and Kurdish forces are approaching from the north, east and south through a belt of mostly abandoned and heavily mined villages scattered across the Ninevah plain.
Maj. Gen. Haider Fadhi, of Iraq’s special forces said they also took part in the operation, and that Bashiqa was completely encircled.
IS has put up stiff resistance in many areas and has carried out attacks further afield that appear aimed at diverting attention from the Mosul operation.
IS militants stormed into the town of Rutba, in far western Iraq, unleashing three suicide car bombs that were blown up before hitting their targets, according to the spokesman for the Joint Military Command, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool.
He said the militants did not seize any government buildings and that the situation “is under control.”
The Mosul offensive involves more 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.
A U.S. service member was killed last week outside Mosul, underscoring the risk to American troops as they advise Iraqi forces. At the same time, a fire at a sulfur plant in northern Iraq set by IS was creating a potential breathing hazard for American forces and other troops at a base south of Mosul that’s being used by troops as a staging area, according to military officials.
They said some troops at the base were wearing protective masks as the large amount of noxious gas in the atmosphere draped towns in the area in toxic smoke.
A small area hospital has treated some 250 people for breathing difficulties.