Kurdish forces enter Daesh-held Bashiqa east of Mosul

By Idris Okuducu and Farhat Shakir

NINEVEH, Iraq

Kurdish Peshmerga forces on Monday stormed Iraq’s northern town of Bashiqa as part of an ongoing military offensive aimed at ousting Daesh militants from the nearby city of Mosul.

According to an Anadolu Agency reporter near the scene of the fighting, Peshmerga fighters entered the town’s center early Monday -- from three directions -- and are currently attacking Daesh positions in the area.

Military experts from a U.S.-led coalition are providing support to Peshmerga forces now fighting inside the town, the reporter said.

According to Sankar Mustafa, a Peshmerga officer, Peshmerga fighters inside Bashiqa managed to kill five Daesh suicide car-bombers who had tried to impede their progress as they advanced on the town center.

"Peshmerga forces now surround Bashiqa’s outskirts and are besieging the town from all sides," Mustafa told Anadolu Agency.

"We also now control the main road linking Bashiqa to Mosul," he said.

The majority-Ezidi town of Bashiqa lies some 12 kilometers (roughly 8 miles) to the northeast of Mosul, the regional capital of Iraq’s northern Nineveh province.

Turkey has a longstanding military training mission at the nearby Camp Bashiqa, where Turkish soldiers have trained both Peshmerga fighters and local tribal volunteers in combat techniques.

In recent months, the mission’s presence in northern Iraq has led to a degree of tension between Baghdad and Ankara amid calls by some Iraqi lawmakers for Turkish troops to withdraw from the area.

Last month, the Iraqi army -- backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes -- launched a wide-ranging operation aimed at retaking Mosul, Daesh’s last bastion in northern Iraq.

In mid-2014, Daesh captured Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, before overrunning vast swathes of territory in the country’s north and west.

Recent months have seen the Iraqi army, backed by local allies on the ground and the U.S.-led air coalition, retake much territory, especially on Mosul’s outskirts and in the western Anbar province.