Kurds open new front as Iraqi elite force joins battle for Mosul

Peshmerga push launch pincer movement for the town of Bashiqa while the counter-terrorism service captures Bartalla just 15km from Mosul.

Iraqi forces fire a M109 self-propelled howitzer towards the village of Al Muftuya from a position in Kani Al Harami, some 35 kilometres of Mosul, on October 19, 2016. Bulent Kilic / AFP

NAWARAN // Iraq’s Kurds on Thursday opened another front in the battle for Mosul by launching a multi-pronged attack on ISIL to the north of the city.

Kurdish and Iraqi forces are closing in on Mosul, and have already made gains in the south and the south-east. On Thursday, the elite counter-terrorism service (CTS) retook full control of Bartalla, a small Christian town less the 15 kilometres east of Mosul. The town was seized by ISIL two years ago along with Mosul and large areas of northern and western Iraq.

The Kurds are piling further pressure on ISIL by launching a pincer attack on the town of Bashiqa in the early hours of the morning. The Kurdish peshmerga also advanced towards Telskuf, one of the largest Christian dwellings in Iraq before it was taken by ISIL.

“The objectives are to clear a number of nearby villages and secure control of strategic areas to further restrict ISIL’s movements,” the peshmerga command said.

To the south, Iraqi forces were making steady gains, working their way up the Tigris Valley and meeting small numbers of fleeing civilians heading the other way.

The campaign to liberate Mosul involves the Iraqi government forces, the Kurdish peshmerga, Iraqi Shiite militias known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) or Hashed Al Shaabi, Sunni militias, and a small number of US special forces.

The US military said one of its servicemen in northern Iraq was killed by an improvised explosive device on Thursday. The Iraqi and peshmerga forces have not released any casualty figures but ISIL on Thursday released a short video showing the bodies of what it said were two peshmerga, hung by their feet from a bridge in central Mosul.

Iraqi prime minister Haider Al Abadi told an international conference on the future of Mosul that the four-day-old campaign to liberate the city was progressing better than anticipated.

“The fighting forces are currently pushing forward toward the town more quickly than we thought, and more quickly certainly than we established in our plan of campaign,” he told the Paris conference via video link.

French president Francois Hollande said the extremists were already leaving Mosul for Raqqa, their stronghold in neighbouring Syria.

“We can’t afford mistakes in the pursuit of the terrorists who are already leaving Mosul for Raqqa,” Mr Hollande said. “We cannot allow those who were in Mosul to evaporate.”

Mr Hollande urged the international community not to abandon the city once the multi-pronged military operation is over. Diplomats from the US, Iraq and about 20 other countries were gathered in Paris to devise a plan to protect civilians, distribute aid and address questions about governing areas newly liberated from ISIL.

As many as 1.5 million residents are believed to be trapped in Mosul and aid agencies have warned that the offensive to liberate the city could trigger the biggest humanitarian crisis of the year. The International Organization for Migration said on Thursday that 5,640 people had been displaced by fighting around Mosul since October 17, most within the previous 24 hours.

The offensive for Mosul – Iraq’s second-largest city and the biggest ISIL-held city – is expected to take weeks, if not months. There are fears it could unleash sectarian tensions, and threaten civilians in a region ravaged by years of violence.

Earlier campaigns to retake Iraqi territory from ISIL have been followed by abuses against the Sunni population by the Hashed Al Shaabi and members of Iraqi security forces and the government has said the Shiite militias would not be allowed to take part in fighting inside Mosul.

Mr Al Abadi told the Paris conference his government was “providing support for internally displaced people” and opening humanitarian corridors amid the military operations.

“We will not allow any violations of human rights,” he said.

Meanwhile, an Iraqi court on Thursday issued an arrest warrant for Atheel Al Nujaifi, the former governor of the Nineveh province of which Mosul is the capital.

The warrant was based on a complaint filed by three parliamentarians in December last year, when a diplomatic crisis erupted between Baghdad and Ankara over a Turkish troop deployment to a base near Bashiqa. Mr Al Nujaifi is accused of facilitating their entry into Iraq.

Turkey’s presence there is not new but the fresh deployment last year sparked a row with Iraq, whose Shiite-dominated government has regularly accused Ankara of aiding ISIL.

Mr Al Nujaifi, whose brother is a former parliament speaker, is widely perceived as corrupt and his running of the province is seen by some as a factor that allowed ISIL to take over with relative ease. He has lived in Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region that borders Nineveh, since ISIL captured Mosul.

He heads a force of local Sunni fighters known as the Nineveh Guard, which has been trained by the Iraq-based Turkish troops and is expected to take part in the battle for Mosul.

* With reporting from Agence France-Presse and Associated Press