Peshmerga Launch Attack on ISIS

Former CIA director and commander of US-led occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has called for the United States to exert influence over governance of the Iraqi city of Mosul following its liberation from Daesh (ISIL) terrorists.

The extremist militants fought back with mortar shells and machine guns and detonated roadside bombs and booby-trapped cars planted on the roads of the Peshmerga forces, the source said. Some sources said that a total of 11 villages had been liberated from IS; however, it was unclear how numerous recaptured villages could be attributed to peshmerga fighters and how many were freed by Iraqi government forces.

The council’s statement said an area of about 50 square kilometers had been cleared.

The advance began early on Sunday after heavy shelling and airstrikes by a US-led coalition against Isis forces, a Reuters correspondent reported from Wardak, 19 miles (30km) south-east of Mosul.

Peshmerga Brig. Gen. Dedewan Khurshid Tofiq says Sunday that “Four villages have been liberated so far”.

Iraqi forces are beginning to encircle Mosul before the full-scale offensive to retake the city.

It’s Iraq’s second largest city and the militant group’s largest urban stronghold in the country. The bridge crosses the Grand Zab river that flows into the Tigris. In July it captured the Qayyara airfield, 35 miles south of Mosul, which will serve as the main staging post for the expected offensive.

In another development on Saturday, Iraqi media quoted Amir Wasiq, a senior police official in Nineveh Province, as saying that Daesh militants executed 60 ex-officers for cooperating with Iraqi intelligence services in an area south of Mosul.

As the campaign to recapture Mosul takes shape aid groups are warning that more than one million people could be displaced by the fighting.

Iraq’s leaders have promised to retake the northern city this year. He said the planning included considerations for humanitarian aid to uprooted civilians.