Ahmad Al-Rubaye, AFP | Iraqi forces stand guard at the Mosul Dam in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on October 24, 2017.

Iraqi troops launched an assault on the last Islamic State group bastion in the country on Thursday even as the Kurds said Baghdad’s forces had attacked their fighters near the border with Turkey.

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There had been fears that the bitter dispute that has raged between the Baghdad government and Iraqi Kurdish leaders since they held a referendum for independence last month would hamper the campaign against the jihadists.

Iraqi forces have retaken more than 90 percent of the territory IS seized in the country in 2014, with the jihadists now confined to a stretch of the Euphrates Valley adjoining some of the last areas they still hold in Syria.

“The heroic legions are advancing into the last den of terrorism in Iraq to liberate Al-Qaim, Rawa and the surrounding villages and hamlets,” Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi said.

“They will all return to the arms of the motherland thanks to the determination and endurance of our fighting heroes,” he added.

“The people of IS have no choice but to die or surrender.”

The US-led coalition battling IS said it was “the last big fight” against the jihadists.

On the Syrian side of the border, Russian-backed government forces have been pushing down the Euphrates valley while US-backed Kurdish and Arab fighters have been attacking the jihadists from the north.

“Bombardment” of Peshmerga positions

The launch of the offensive against IS’s last Iraqi redoubt comes with thousands of Iraqi federal troops and militia engaged in an operation to reassert federal control over thousands of square kilometres (miles) of territory long disputed with the Kurds.

On Thursday, federal troops and allied paramilitaries stepped up that operation, assaulting Kurdish forces in a disputed oil-rich area of Nineveh province in the far north near the Turkish border, Kurdish authorities said.

“As of 6 am (0300 GMT), Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed PMF (Hashed al-Shaabi Popular Mobilisation Forces) are shelling peshmerga positions from Zummar front, northwest Mosul, using heavy artillery,” the top defence body of the autonomous Kurdish regional government said.

“They are advancing towards peshmerga positions.”

Annulment of referendum

Last month’s Kurdish referendum overwhelmingly backed independence from Baghdad. Though the vote was non-binding it has roiled tensions with the central government and the region.

Haider al-Abadi says the central government "will accept nothing but the annulment of the referendum and respect for the constitution," according to a written statement released on Thursday.

The prime minister's statement comes after Iraqi Kurdish leaders on Wednesday offered to freeze the referendum results in order to facilitate talks with Baghdad and end the violence.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and AP)

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