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ISIL’s savage occupation of western Iraq — which has involved brutal executions and the sexual enslavement of women — may finally be about to end.

With Canadian spy planes identifying targets for coalition jets and assault helicopters and more than 22,000 Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Shia paramilitary troops massing around Mosul with their coalition special forces advisers, the long-anticipated ground push to expel ISIL from its biggest and last Iraqi toehold is only days away.

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The critical phase of the campaign to liberate Mosul from ISIL’s draconian version of Sharia law began a couple of days ago with a fresh wave of coalition air strikes and American and French artillery and rocket attacks designed to “soften up” enemy positions in Iraq’s second-largest city. This bombardment is to be followed by the slow encirclement of Mosul by infantry and armoured units.

Their operations, which likely will still be taking place on the eve of the U.S. presidential election, are to involve attacks by Iraqi forces from the east and south and southwest of Mosul across a broad, dusty plain that is intersected by the Tigris River.