Offensive begun to retake stronghold of Islamic State

ABU GHADDUR, Iraq — U.S.-backed Iraqi forces began a multipronged assault Sunday to retake the town of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, marking the next phase in the country’s war on the Islamic State group.

Tal Afar and the surrounding area is one of the last pockets of Islamic State-held territory in Iraq after victory was declared in July in Mosul, the country’s second-largest city. The town, 93 miles east of the Syrian border, sits along a major road that was once a key Islamic State supply route.

“The city of Tal Afar will be liberated and will join all the liberated cities,” Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a televised speech early Sunday. He was dressed in a black uniform of the type worn by Iraqi special forces.

He called on the militants to “surrender or die.”

By afternoon, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Rasheed Yar Allah, who commands the operation, said forces had recaptured a series of villages east, southwest and northwest of town.

The U.S.-led coalition providing air and other support to the troops praised what it said was a “capable, formidable, and increasingly professional force.”

“They are well prepared to deliver another defeat” to Islamic State in Tal Afar, like in Mosul, the coalition said in a statement.

Lt. Gen. Riyad Jalal Tawfiq, of the Iraqi army, said militants had deployed small teams of attackers as well as suicide car bombs and roadside bombs.

The coalition estimates that as many as 50,000 civilians remain in and around Tal Afar. In past battles, Islamic State prevented civilians from fleeing and used them as human shields, slowing Iraqi advances.

Hours after announcing the operation, the United Nations expressed concerns over the safety of the civilians, calling on warring parties to protect them.

A stepped up campaign of air strikes and a troop buildup already has forced tens of thousands to flee Tal Afar, threatening to compound a humanitarian crisis sparked by the Mosul operation. Some 49,000 people have fled the Tal Afar district since April, according to the United Nations. Nearly a million people remain displaced by the nine-month campaign to retake Mosul.

Iraqi forces have driven Islamic State from most of the major towns and cities seized by the militants in the summer of 2014.