Carter in Irbil to get closer assessment of Mosul fight

Some 500 Turkish troops at a base north of Mosul have been training Sunni and Kurdish fighters since last December.

Iraqi special forces shelled militant positions before dawn near Bartella, a historically Christian town east of Mosul that they had retaken last week.

The Kirkuk police said at least 80 people were killed in the assault, mainly Kurdish security forces.

The graffiti left by the Sunni extremists also denigrated Iraq’s Shiite majority. The Iraqi Prime Minister had on Saturday rejected an offer of Turkish involvement on Saturday.

She stood with a smile on her face to thank the Iraqi army troops that liberated her village from the barbaric regime.

Kurdish fighters killed dozens of IS militants, cordoned off eight villages and blocked IS’s ability to supply Mosul with reinforcements.

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

But he cautioned: “I have not received a report that says every house has been cleared, every Daesh [IS fighter] has been killed and every IED [roadside bomb] has been removed”.

Journalists have not been allowed into the area near Bashiqa to confirm. He said the Kurds had captured two villages near Bashiqa and a small Shiite shrine in the area. The terrorist group has moreover mounted several counter-attacks on a wider scale than generally reported. On Sunday, Turkish forces in Iraq fired weapons on militants in Bashiqa.

Some local media outlets said the jihadi fighters had taken over some of Rutba’s mosques, announcing their return on loudspeakers.

Iraq’s prime minister said this week that the offensive is moving faster than expected.

“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.

Qayyarah, where the plant was set alight, acts as the main United States hub for supporting the Iraqi government offensive to drive IS out of their Mosul stronghold.

The Iraqi special forces in the convoy returned fire after being attacked on Saturday. Rutbah, which fell under the jihadists’ control in 2014, was taken back earlier this year.

Imad Meshaal spoke of clashes in the centre between IS and security forces.

Around 30 insurgents launched a surprise attack in the early hours of Sunday morning, using auto suicide bombs and mortar fire.

Daquq lies about 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Kirkuk, where on Friday IS launched a surprise attack, apparently to divert attention from Mosul.

At least 46 people, majority members of the security forces, were killed in the raid and ensuing clashes. Another 170 were wounded, and a sundown curfew has been imposed on the city.

Within Mosul itself, aid agencies are anxious for the welfare of the city’s estimated 1.5million inhabitants, whom they say are at risk of being caught in crossfire and used as human shields by the 4,000 or so Isis fighters embedded in the city. The expected IS focus will be on disrupting and delaying the Iraqi advance rather than trying to hold ground outside the city.

Konashenkov said two jets of the USA -led coalition were involved in the raid, apparently mistaking the procession for militants of the Islamic State group.

The offensive that started on Monday to capture Mosul is backed by a US-led coalition.

A spokesman for the peshmerga said its forces have lost 25 troops since the beginning of the offensive. He told the crowd he was encouraged by what he has seen so far in the fight to retake Mosul.

The air has turned a greyish color as it mixes with smoke from earlier oil well fires set by the militants.