Iraq’s armed forces started an offensive against Islamic State in the northerly Nineveh province on Thursday in what a military statement described as the first stage of an operation aimed at liberating the city of Mosul.
The assault was launched from the Makhmour area, to which thousands of Iraqi troops have deployed in recent weeks, setting up base alongside Kurdish and U.S. forces around 60 km south of Mosul.
Backed by air power from a U.S.-led coalition and by Kurdish peshmerga forces, Iraqi troops advanced westwards, recapturing several villages from the Islamist militants, according to multiple military sources.
“The first phase of the Fatah (Conquest) Operation has been launched at dawn to liberate Nineveh, raising the Iraqi flag in several villages,” said a military statement cited by state TV.
Iraqi officials say they will retake Mosul this year but, in private, many question whether the army, which partially collapsed when Islamic State overran a third of the country in June 2014, will be ready in time.
The city, home to 2 million people before being taken over by the ultra-hardline jihadist group, is by far the largest center it controls in either Iraq or Syria, and is still heavily populated, complicating efforts to retake it.
