BASHIQA // Iraqi Kurdish forces have seized the town of Bashiqa from ISIL, an official said on Tuesday, one of the final steps in securing the eastern approaches to Mosul.
South of Mosul, Iraqi investigators carried out an initial examination of a mass grave discovered in the area of Hamam Al Alil, a town seized from ISIL on Monday.
Bashiqa was under the “complete control” of Kurdish peshmerga forces, said Jabbar Yawar, secretary general of the Kurdish regional ministry responsible for the fighters.
“Our forces are clearing mines and sweeping the city.”
The peshmerga, however, said there were still some suicide bombers and snipers inside Bashiqa, and that about five per cent of the town remained under militant control.
At least three air strikes hit the town on Tuesday and gunfire and an explosion was heard from inside.
Iraqi forces launched an offensive to retake Mosul on October 17, and last week elite troops breached the city’s limits.
Baghdad scored another victory against ISIL on Monday by establishing full control over Hamam Al Alil, about 15 kilometres from the edge of Mosul and the last significant town on the way to the city from the south.
The same day Iraqi forces said a mass grave had been found at an agricultural college in the area. The offensive’s Joint Operations Command said “100 bodies of citizens with their heads cut off” had been uncovered.
On Tuesday men in Iraqi security forces uniforms used ropes to pull two bodies, one of them headless, from the grave, and also removed a decapitated head.
“Today, the team conducted an initial examination,” said Mohammed Taher Al Tamimi, an Iraqi cabinet official.
Mr Al Tamimi said the victims had been blindfolded and had their hands and feet bound.
He said around 25 bodies were initially visible but that investigators believed there were “very large numbers” of corpses at the site.
The United Nations said on Tuesday that ISIL fighters had forced thousands of civilians to retreat with them from Hamam Al Alil to Mosul airport on November 4.
The UN has been warning for weeks that ISIL is making civilians living in districts around Mosul move into the city.
Also on Tuesday, officials from the mainly Shiite Iraqi militias advancing on the ISIL-held town of Tal Afar said their forces planned to seize a nearby military airbase from the extremists.
The town of Tal Afar, and its airbase, are located on the main road west of Mosul. Capturing them would help cut ISIL supply lines between Mosul and its Syrian territories, and offer a base for the militias’ stated plan of ultimately taking their battle with ISIL into Syria.
Capturing an airbase would point to the growing muscle of the Hashed Al Shaabi paramilitary forces, which officially report to the Shiite-led government of prime minister Haider Al Abadi but are also backed by Tehran and often fly the banners of Iran’s Supreme Leader.
“Now we are 25km from the Tal Afar airbase,” said Kareem Alewi, a commander of one of the Hashed brigades and a member of the Badr Organisation, the most powerful force within the militia alliance.
He said it would be the first military base controlled by the Hashed, who could take their fight across the frontier once Mosul is taken. “If Iraq is liberated, no doubt our second goal will be to pursue Daesh inside Syria,” he added.
* Agence France-Presse, Reuters