Peshmerga advance tightens noose around ISIL in Mosul

Six villages retaken in operation to secure a part of the Nineveh plain between Mosul and Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region.

Peshmerga take cover during an operation to liberate several ISIL-held villages south-east of Mosul on August 14, 2016. Andrea Dicenzo / EPA

ERBIL, Iraq // Iraqi Kurdish forces have retaken six villages east of ISIL-held Mosul in an operation launched on Sunday as part of preparations for a full-scale offensive to liberate the city.

The operation aims to “clear several more villages” and is “one of many shaping operations” that will increase pressure on Mosul, according to a statement released by the Kurdish security council, an umbrella group of the multiple security forces in the autonomous region.

Peshmerga Brig Gen Dedewan Khurshid Tofiq said the operation as ongoing.

Footage filmed by Rudaw, a local television network, showed smoke rising from a village in the distance as armoured vehicles pushed across a field.

Col Muwaffaq Zebari, a peshmerga commander on the front line, said the operation was to secure a part of the Nineveh plain between Mosul and Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region.

“A military operation was launched this morning ... to recapture 10 villages on the eastern bank of the Khazr river [and] has so far succeeded in recapturing six,” Col Zebari said.

He said the ground operation was getting air support from the US-led coalition against ISIL and was aimed at preventing further ISIL attacks on an area called Gweyr, about 40 kilometres south-east of Mosul.

The Kurdish security council said the area cleared was about 50 square kilometres.

Seven members of the Kurdish forces were killed in the fighting, according to senior peshmerga officer, but there was no official confirmation of the death toll.

Kurdistan TV said one of its reporters covering the offensive was killed and another was wounded when a mortar round was fired into a village recently retaken by the peshmerga from ISIL.

Iraqi forces are beginning to encircle Mosul ahead of a final assault to drive ISIL out of the city. Sixty kilometres south of Mosul, Iraqi forces are working to clear villages around the Qayyara air base, which was recaptured from the extremists last month. The air base will serve as the main staging post for the coming offensive

Mosul, 400km north of Baghdad and Iraq’s second-largest city, has been held by ISIL since 2014. It is the last major urban stronghold of the extremist group in Iraq after Iraqi government forces drove its fighters out of Ramadi and Fallujah in Anbar province earlier this year.

* Agencies