BAGHDAD/ BARTLLEA // ISIL expanded its attacks against the Iraq army and Kurdish forces across the country on Monday, trying to relieve pressure on the group’s defences around Mosul, its last major Iraqi stronghold.
About 80 ISIL-held villages and towns have been retaken in the first week of the offensive, bringing Iraqi and Kurdish forces closer to the edge of the city itself – where the battle will be hardest fought.
In a series of counter-attacks on far-flung targets across Iraq since Friday, ISIL fighters have hit Kirkuk, the north’s main oil city, the town of Rutba that controls the road from Baghdad to Jordan and Syria, and Sinjar, a region west of Mosul inhabited by the persecuted Yazidi minority.
Yazidi provincial chief Mahma Xelil said at least 15 extremists were killed in the two-hour battle in Sinjar and a number of their vehicles destroyed, while two peshmerga fighters were wounded.
ISIL, meanwhile, claimed that two peshmerga vehicles were destroyed and all those on board killed.
The extremist group committed some of its worst atrocities in Sinjar when it swept through the Yazidi region two years ago, killing men, kidnapping children and enslaving women. Kurdish fighters took back the region a year ago.
Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said Iraqi security forces and the peshmerga were making “solid progress” in their advance on Mosul, but facing heavy resistance.
Last week the Iraqi army dislodged insurgents from the main Christian region east of Mosul and its elite unit, the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS), has pressed ahead with operations to clear more villages since Saturday.
CTS forces took a handful of villages west of the Christian town of Bartella in an early morning attack on Monday and are now six kilometres east of Mosul.
The areas taken so far have been largely empty of civilian populations, but civilians could be living in the two villages lying ahead, Bazwaia and Gogjali, which border Mosul.
ISIL used improvised explosive devices and snipers in the areas retaken on Monday, as they have in many previous battles, Brigadier General Faleh Fadel Jasim said.
The militants dug a 10 kilometre-long network of tunnels under Bartella, with food and weapons stores, to hold up the army, he said, adding: “They tried making fortified defence lines but they weren’t able to.”
Also on Monday, Iraqi troops were battling ISIL in Qaraqosh, which used to be the largest Christian town in the country. Army forces entered the town for the third day running but armoured convoys deployed around it were met with shelling from inside.
Iraqi forces also scored gains on the southern front, where they have been making quick progress, taking one village after another as they work their way up the Tigris Valley.
On the northern front, Kurdish peshmerga forces were fighting the extremists for control of Bashiqa – despite Kurdish claims that the town had been captured on Sunday.
Turkey, which has a base in the area, said on Sunday it had provided artillery support in Bashiqa following a request from the peshmerga.
The presence of Turkish troops on Iraqi soil is deeply unpopular in Baghdad and the Joint Operations Command on Monday vehemently denied any Turkish participation.
But artillery fire coming from the Turkish base has been sighted on several occasions since the start of operations a week ago.
* Reuters, Agence France-Presse
