Iraq forces press Mosul assault, hunt Kirkuk attackers

Erbil, Iraq — Iraqi forces battled Sunday through booby-traps, sniper fire and suicide car bombs to tighten the noose around Mosul, while also hunting Daesh extremists behind attacks elsewhere in the country.

Kurdish forces announced a new push at dawn on Bashiqa, northeast of Mosul, where some 10,000 fighters are engaged in a huge assault to take the Daesh-held town.

Turkey said the peshmerga had requested assistance from its soldiers at a base near Bashiqa and announced it offered support with artillery and tanks.

Ankara's claim came a day after Baghdad turned down a suggestion by visiting US Defence chief Ashton Carter — who met Kurdish leader Massud Barzani on Sunday — for Turkey to be given a part in the battle.

Launched last Monday, the assault aims to reclaim the last major Iraqi city under Daesh control, dealing another setback to the extremists’ self-declared “caliphate” in Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

The extremists hit back on Friday with a surprise assault on the Kurdish-controlled city of Kirkuk, and two days later security forces were still tracking down fighters involved in the attack.

The dozens of attackers, including several suicide bombers, failed to seize control of key government buildings but sowed chaos in Kirkuk, a large oil-rich and ethnically mixed city.

At least 51 of the extremists had been killed, including three more on Sunday, local security officials said.

At least 46 people, most of them members of the security forces, were also killed in the raid and ensuing clashes, which had almost completely stopped by Sunday evening.

Life was returning to normal in some parts of the city but security forces were deployed in southern neighbourhoods where several gunmen were still actively being hunted.

Daesh militants also attacked Rutba, a remote town near the Jordanian border in the western province of Anbar, with five suicide car bombs, the area’s top army commander said on Sunday.

The attackers briefly seized the mayor’s office but security forces quickly regained the upper hand, he said.

Fierce Daesh resistance 

The spectacular attack in Kirkuk, of a type observers warned, could happen more often as Daesh loses territory and reverts to a traditional insurgency, temporarily drew attention away from Mosul.

But there was no sign it had any significant impact on the offensive to retake the city, Iraq’s largest military operation in years.

Tens of thousands of fighters, including Iraqi federal troops and Kurdish peshmerga, are taking part in the assault.

Engaged on the northern and eastern fronts, the peshmerga are expected to stop along a line at an average of 20 kilometres from the boundaries of the city proper.

“They are pretty much there,” a US military official said on Saturday, adding that the lines “will be solidified in the next day or two”.

The peshmerga announced they had secured eight villages near Bashiqa, a Daesh-held town northeast of Mosul and one of the main Kurdish targets in the offensive.

Elite federal forces were also fighting to retake control of Qaraqosh, which lies just east of Mosul and used to be the largest Christian town in Iraq.

Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, commander of the US-led coalition, said on Saturday that militant resistance was stiff.

“It’s pretty significant, we are talking about enemy indirect fire, multiple IEDs (improvised explosive devices), multiple VBIED (vehicle-borne IEDs) each day, even some anti-tank guided missiles,” he said in Baghdad.

Iraqi Kurdish and federal forces rarely release casualty figures but hospitals behind Kurdish lines were overwhelmed by the number of wounded, an AFP reporter said.

Heavy casualties 

“We have a shortage of human resources, medical equipment, medicine and specialised doctors,” Lawand Meran, a doctor at Erbil West hospital, said.

“Soon, if we have 1,000 casualties, our capacity will not be enough.”

US military officials have revised their estimate slightly upward for the number of Daesh militants in and around Mosul.

They believe Daesh is defending Mosul, where the “caliphate” was proclaimed in June 2014, with 3,000 to 5,000 fighters inside the city and 1,000 to 2,000 in the outskirts.

There is deep concern for an estimated 1.2 million civilians still believed to be in the city.

Several thousand civilians fleeing the fighting and the extremists who ruled them for two years have escaped to camps for the displaced south of Mosul.

“Over 5,000 people are currently displaced and in need of humanitarian assistance,” the United Nations said in an update on Sunday.

“Population movements are fluctuating as the front lines move, including people returning to their homes following improved security conditions in the immediate area,” it said in a statement.

Iraqi forces are now fighting in sparsely populated areas but when they near the limits of the city itself aid groups fear the start of a huge exodus.

A million people could be displaced, sparking an unprecedented humanitarian emergency in a country where more than three million people have already been forced from their homes since the start of 2014.