Iraq forces make gains against IS near Mosul

NAWARAN, IRAQ — Elite Iraqi forces retook a town on the eastern edge of Mosul yesterday while Kurdish peshmerga fighters opened a new front in the offensive to wrest back the jihadists' last bastion in Iraq.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told an international meeting in Paris that the four-day-old offensive was "advancing faster than expected."

France and Iraq were cochairing the meeting on the future of Mosul, which observers have warned could raise even greater humanitarian and interconfessional challenges than the massive military operation to retake it.

In some areas, the Iraqi advance was met by a trickle of civilians fleeing both the fighting and the jihadists who ruled them for two years, but the feared mass exodus from Mosul had yet to materialize.

The counter-terrorism service (CTS), Iraq's besttrained and most battleseasoned force, retook full control of Bartalla, a town that lies less than 15 kilometers (nine miles) east of Mosul.

"I announce to the people of Bartalla and Mosul we have complete control over Bartalla," CTS commander Taleb Sheghati al-Kenani told reporters from the town.

"Its residents, its churches and all of its infrastructure are now under the control of CTS," he said of the small Christian town that IS seized when it swept across the Nineveh plain in August 2014.

Some 120,000 Iraqi Christians were forced to flee their homes at the time.

Further north Kurdish peshmerga forces opened a new front with a multiplepronged assault on the town of Bashiqa.

"The objectives are to clear a number of nearby villages and secure control of strategic areas to further restrict ISIL's movements," the peshmerga command said, using an alternative acronym for IS.