Iraq forces take 2 villages near Daesh-held Mosul: Army

By Ibrahim Saleh and Mohamed Waleed

BAGHDAD

Iraqi forces on Monday captured two more villages near Iraq’s northern city of Mosul from the Daesh terrorist group, according to military sources.

"The army’s Ninth Armored Division, along with commandos from the Nineveh Operations Command, have taken the village of Salamiyah in the Nimrud district southeast of Mosul," Lieutenant-General Abdul-Amir Yarallah, who is leading the Mosul campaign, said in a televised statement.

Yarallah added that Iraq’s 16th Armored Division, meanwhile, had captured the village of Orta Kharab north of Mosul.

"Our forces raised the Iraqi flag over both villages after inflicting heavy losses on the enemy, both in terms of personnel and equipment," Yarallah asserted.

Fierce clashes remain ongoing, meanwhile, between Iraqi anti-terrorism forces and Daesh militants in Mosul’s eastern neighborhoods, while army forces and the Hashd al-Shaabi militia have surrounded Tal Afar city (some 60 kilometers west of Mosul), Iraqi army officer Mahmoud al-Hamdani told Anadolu Agency.

Established in 2014, the Hashd al-Shaabi is an umbrella group of pro-government Shia militias drawn up with the express purpose of fighting Daesh.

According to al-Hamdani, army troops and Shia militiamen are now advancing on the Tal Afar district’s town of Sheikh Ibrahim, located some 25 kilometers southeast of Tal Afar city.

Tal Afar is a Turkmen-majority city in Iraq’s northern Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the provincial capital.

Sunni political figures in Iraq have consistently warned that the entry of Hashd al-Shaabi militiamen into Tal Afar could trigger sectarian conflict with the city’s mostly Sunni-Muslim residents.

In mid-October, the Iraqi army -- backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and local allies on the ground -- began a wide-ranging operation to retake Mosul, Daesh’s last bastion in northern Iraq.

Once Iraq’s second largest city in terms of population, Mosul was overrun by the terrorist group -- along with large parts of the country’s northern and western regions -- in mid-2014.

Recent months have seen the Iraqi army and its allies retake much territory, especially on Mosul’s outskirts and in the western Anbar province.