Peshmerga report taking 11 villages from Islamic State as forces join Iraqi army in staking out positions around the city

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Kurdish peshmerga forces have launched a fresh attack on Islamic State militants as part of a campaign to recapture Mosul, the de facto capital of Isis in Iraq, Kurdish officials said.

The advance began early Sunday after heavy shelling and airstrikes by a US-led coalition against Isis forces, a Reuters correspondent reported from Wardak, 19 miles south-east of Mosul.

US-led airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq – interactive Read more

The militants fought back, firing mortars at the advancing troops and detonating at least two car bombs. Clouds of black smoke rose from the area and dozens of civilians fled in the direction of the peshmerga lines, brandishing white flags.

A peshmerga commander said 11 villages had been taken from the ultra-hardline Sunni militants as the troops headed to Gwer, the target of the operation, 25 miles south-east of Mosul.

The Iraqi army and peshmerga forces of the Kurdish self-rule region are gradually taking up positions around Mosul, 250 miles north of Baghdad.

It was from Mosul’s Grand Mosque in 2014 that the Isis leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared a “caliphate” spanning regions of Iraq and Syria.

Mosul is the largest urban centre under the militants’ control, and had a pre-war population of nearly 2 million. Its fall would mark the effective defeat of Isis, in Iraq, according to the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, who has said he aims to retake the city this year.

The Iraqi army is trying to advance from the south. In July it captured the Qayyara airfield, 35 miles south of Mosul, to serve as the main staging post for the offensive.

The peshmerga operation on Sunday “is one of many shaping operations that will also increase pressure on [Isis] in and around Mosul”, said the Kurdistan regional security council in a statement.

The preparation for the offensive on Mosul was “approaching the final phase”, Brett McGurk, the US envoy to the coalition fighting the militant group, said in Baghdad on Thursday. He said the planning included humanitarian considerations.

Once the fighting intensifies around Mosul, up to a million people could be driven from their homes in northern Iraq, posing a massive humanitarian problem, the International Committee of the Red Cross said last month.

More than 3.4 million people have already been forced by conflict to leave their homes across Iraq, taking refuge in areas under control of the government or in the Kurdish region.