The offensive to seize back Mosul from Daesh is going faster than planned, Iraq’s prime minister said on Thursday, as Iraqi and Kurdish forces launched a new military operation to clear villages on the city’s outskirts.
Howitzer and mortar fire started at dawn, hitting a group of villages held by Daesh about 10-20 km from Mosul, while helicopters flew overhead, according to Reuters reporters at two frontline locations north and east of Mosul.
To the sound of machine gun fire and explosions, dozens of black Humvees of the elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS), mounted with machine guns, headed toward Bartella, an abandoned Christian village just east of Mosul.
Militants were using suicide car-bombs, roadside bombs and snipers to resist the attack, and were pounding surrounding areas with mortars, a CTS commander said.
Hours later, the head of Iraq’s Special Forces, Lt. Gen. Talib Shaghati, told reporters at a command center near the frontline that troops had surrounded Bartella and entered the center of the village. Two soldiers were hurt and none killed, and they had killed at least 15 militants, he said.
“After Bartella is Mosul, God willing.”
Diplomats from the US, Iraq and some 20 other countries are meeting in Paris to make a stabilization plan for Mosul.
Prime Minister Haidar Al-Abadi, addressing anti-Daesh coalition allies meeting by a video link, said: “The forces are pushing toward the town more quickly than we thought and more quickly than we had programmed.”
French President Francois Hollande told the meeting that terrorists were already leaving for Raqqa, their stronghold in neighboring Syria.
“We can’t afford mistakes in the pursuit of the terrorists who are already leaving Mosul for Raqqa,” Hollande said. “We cannot allow those who were in Mosul to evaporate.”
Jean-Marc Ayrault, France’s foreign minister, stressed that the long-awaited, multi-pronged battle for Mosul is only one piece of the campaign against Daesh, and that the international community must think about “the next step” — notably, Raqqa in Syria. 
Ayrault said “hundreds of thousands, if not a million” people might try to flee Mosul as Iraqi forces battle to take it back from extremist control.
Ali Awni, a Kurdish officer, kept a handheld radio receiver open on a frequency used by Daesh. “They are giving targets for their mortars,” he said.
Meanwhile, an Iraqi court has issued a warrant for the arrest of a senior political figure from Mosul on charges of passing intelligence to neighboring Turkey, the judiciary said on Thursday.
The warrant was issued for Atheel Al-Nujaifi, a former governor of the Nineveh province of which Mosul is the capital, after three parliamentarians lodged a complaint against him, a statement said.
In another development, Kurdish forces launched a major assault on a town held by the Daesh group near Mosul, opening a new front in the offensive.
The main target of the latest Kurdish push was the town of Bashiqa, northeast of Mosul. 
“The objectives are to clear a number of nearby villages and secure control of strategic areas to further restrict Daesh movements,” the peshmerga command said.
At around 6 a.m. (0300 GMT), bulldozers flattened a path for forces in armored vehicles to carve their way down toward Bashiqa.
As tanks and personnel carriers prepared to advance, a shadow glided above them and one peshmerga shouted “drone!”
Fighters opened fire at it with every weapon available, lighting up the dim morning sky, until it fell to the ground and the troops resumed their advance.
“There have been times when they dropped explosives,” said Halgurd Hasan, one of the Kurdish fighters deployed in a position overlooking the plain north of Mosul.
A reporter in the village of Nawaran near Bashiqa saw the downed drone, a Raven RQ-11B model similar to a booby-trapped one that killed two Kurdish fighters and wounded two French soldiers a week ago.
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.
Dozens of men, women and children who escaped from the village of Mdaraj, south of Mosul, some on foot and others with vehicles, were waiting as police searched their belongings. “We snuck out,” said a man who gave his name as Abu Hussein. He said that the huge plumes of black smoke from fires lit by Daesh to provide cover from airstrikes had helped them slip out unnoticed.
A US service member died on Thursday from wounds sustained in an improvised explosive device blast in northern Iraq, the US-led coalition said in a statement.

Source: Arab News