Multiple bombings in Baghdad kill at least 31

Since October of previous year, Iraqi forces have been waging large-scale military operations aimed at driving Daesh from Mosul, the terrorist group’s last major stronghold in northern Iraq.

Iraqi official sources say more than 90 percent of Mosul is liberated.

Around 700,000 people are believed to have left Mosul since the campaign to retake the city began seven months ago.

“French forces work in close cooperation with their Iraqi and global partners. regardless of national origin”, said a French Ministry of Defense spokeswoman who declined to comment more specifically on the operation.

The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the attack, which Iraqi officials said involved apparently remotely detonated explosives inside a parked auto.

United Nations and humanitarian officials estimate that 700,000 people – one-third of the city’s prewar population – have already fled the fighting, with some 200,000 still thought to be trapped.

It is now besieged in an enclave in the northern city of Mosul, which it has used as its de facto capital in Iraq.

“The equipment and reinforcements come and go daily … but in the last few weeks they have brought in more heavy military vehicles, TOW (missiles), and armored vehicles”, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Almost 90 percent of Mosul has been recaptured by Iraqi forces, with the Islamic State group holed up in neighbourhoods around the Old City, where at least 250,000 civilians are still trapped and living in dire conditions.

Rudaw’s cameras have captured absolute mayhem this week as some fleeing civilians were shot at by the ISIS militants in the city’s western district of Saha, north of the ISIS’s well-protected Old Mosul.

Popular Mobilization Untis (PMU) ride on a tank during a battle with Daesh, at Um Jaris village on the Iraqi border with Syria, Iraq on May 29, 2017.

Before the PMF was sanctioned by the Iraqi government al-Nujaba fighters openly fought inside Syria, helping prop up the Assad regime during the early days of the uprising against his government. “Adults eat one meal a day, either flour or lentil soup”.

The UN last week said up to 200,000 more people – half of them children – could flee Mosul as fighting moves to the Old City.

However, an unknown number of IS fighters were still hidden among an estimated 165,000 civilians in the old city. “One ripped through my leg, the other in my groin”.

Iraqi forces are in the last stages of defeating the Islamic State (IS) militant group in the remaining neighbourhoods of the western side of Mosul, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said.

The attacks come as IS militants are steadily losing more territory to USA -backed Iraqi forces in the battle for Mosul, the country’s second-largest city.

One of the worst incidents came on March 17, where the Pentagon determined a US airstrike set off secondary explosives laid by IS; the ensuing blast killed more than 100 civilians sheltering in a home in western Mosul.