Iraq peshmerga storm Daesh town as army battles in Mosul

BASHIQA, Iraq — Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces stormed a Daesh-held town northeast of Mosul on Monday, clearing a pocket of militants outside the city while Iraqi troops wage a fierce urban war with the extremists in its eastern neighbourhoods.

As the operation against Daesh’s Iraqi stronghold entered its fourth week, fighters across the border launched an offensive in the Syrian half of the extremists group's self-declared “caliphate”, targeting its base in the city of Raqqa.

An alliance of US-backed Kurdish and Arab groups launched the campaign for Raqqa, where Daesh has been dug in for nearly three years, with an assault on territory about 50km to the north which they have dubbed Euphrates Anger.

The battle for Raqqa will be every bit as challenging as the one for Mosul, with both cities carrying huge strategic and symbolic value to the extremists and their self-declared “caliphate” covering territory in both Syria and Iraq.

The Iraqi operation, involving a 100,000-strong alliance of troops, security forces, Kurdish peshmerga and Shiite militias, backed by US-led air strikes and a global consensus against the extremists, has so far gained just a small foothold in Mosul.

The Raqqa campaign, launched amid a complex civil war in Syria which has divided world powers, is not coordinated with President Bashar Assad or the Syrian army. The Kurdish element of SDF groups fighting towards Raqqa also makes them an unlikely force to recapture the Arab city.

"It is difficult to put a time frame on the operation at present. The battle will not be easy," a Syrian Kurdish source said.

Battle for Bashiqa

In Bashiqa, some 15km from Mosul, a 2,000-strong peshmerga force sought to drive out the militants from the town, which lies on the Nineveh plains at the foot of a mountain.

Artillery pounded the town before the Kurdish peshmerga and US special forces entered the town in armoured vehicles, Humvees and on foot.

“Our aim is to take control and clear out all the Daesh militants,” Lieutenant Colonel Safeen Rasoul told Reuters as the operation began. “Our estimates are there are about 100 still left and 10 suicide cars.”

Daesh militants have sought to slow the offensive on their Mosul stronghold with waves of suicide car bomb attacks. Iraqi commanders say there have been 100 on the eastern front and 140 in the south.

A top Kurdish official told Reuters on Sunday the extremists had also deployed drones strapped with explosives, long-range artillery shells filled with chlorine gas and mustard gas, and snipers.

As a peshmerga column moved into Bashiqa on Monday, a loud explosion rocked the convoy, and two large plumes of white smoke could be seen just 15 metres away. A peshmerga officer said two suicide car bombs had tried to hit the advancing force.

“They are surrounded... If they want to surrender, OK. If they don’t, they will be killed,” said Lieutenant Colonel Qandeel Mahmoud, standing next to a Humvee, supported by a cane he said he has needed since he was wounded in the leg by two suicide car bombers four months ago.

Armed US soldiers, part of a 5,000-strong force Washington says is advising and supporting the Iraqi offensive, were accompanying the peshmerga in Bashiqa through streets lined by rows of damaged houses, some with entire floors collapsed.

Fighting was intense and at one stage a convoy of 40 vehicles was held up by a single Daesh sniper.

Kurdish military authorities later said the peshmerga were carrying out house-to-house searches in the town.

In eastern districts of Mosul, which Iraqi special forces broke into last week, officers say militants  melted into the population, ambushing and isolating troops in what the special forces spokesman called the world’s “toughest urban warfare”.