The Kurdish fighters huddled in an abandoned home on the edge of Qarqashah, one of a dozen villages east of Mosul that was captured from the Daesh group this week in operations aimed at laying the groundwork for an advance on the extremist-held city.
Like almost all the small villages retaken this week, Qarqashah was nearly deserted. That allowed the US-led coalition to clear territory using airstrikes, rather than relying on street-to-street battles by Kurdish forces known as peshmerga. But peshmerga commanders said their forces still took significant casualties.
In Qarqashah alone, peshmerga commanders estimated they lost 10 men. The fighting continued even after the operation was declared complete on Monday.
Maj. Gen. Hama Rasheed sat on a plastic chair inside the simple home his men were using as a base. Outside, his fighters exchanged fire with Daesh men holed up in a neighboring village.
Fields of dead grass burned from Daesh-launched mortar rounds. Kurdish and coalition forces stationed atop a nearby hill responded with volleys of artillery fire onto the Daesh fighters below.
“The main aim of the operation was to open a strategic road to the Christian areas of the Nineveh plain” stretching north and east of Mosul, said Brig. Gen. Dedewan Khurshid Tofiq, one of the peshmerga commanders overseeing the operation. Tofiq said a bridge seized Monday could facilitate a troop buildup east of Mosul once it is repaired.
The operation, which lasted just under 48 hours, is expected to be one of many aimed at encircling Mosul.

Source: Arab News