Iraqi forces take two villages while rights group question mosque attack
IRAQI forces have fought their way into two villages near Mosul as the offensive to retake the extremist-held city entered its second week.
Iraqi special forces began shelling Islamic State (IS) positions before dawn near Bartella, a historically Christian town to the east of Mosul which they had retaken last week.
With patriotic music blaring from loudspeakers on their Humvees, they then pushed into the village of Tob Zawa, about five miles from Mosul, amid heavy clashes.
The Iraqi Federal Police, a military-style force, pushed into a small village in the Shura district south of Mosul, where they fired a large anti-aircraft gun and rocketpropelled grenades as they battled IS militants.
They later appeared to have secured the village, a cluster of squat homes on a desert plain, and handed out aid to civilians.
The US-led coalition said it had carried out six air strikes near Mosul, destroying 19 fighting positions and 17 vehicles, as well as rocket launchers, artillery and tunnels.
Meanwhile, a rights group has called for an investigation into a suspected air strike that hit a mosque in the town of Daquq, northern Iraq, on Friday, killing more than a dozen civilians.
The strike happened amid a large IS assault on the nearby city of Kirkuk, which was meant to distract the Iraqi forces and their allies from the massive operation around Mosul, the country’s second largest city.
The IS attack on Kirkuk, about 100 miles south-east of Mosul, lasted for two days and killed at least 80 people, mainly Kurdish security forces, who assumed control of the city in 2014 as Iraqi forces crumbled before an IS advance.
Human Rights Watch said Daquq’s residents believe Friday’s attack was an air strike because of the extent of the destruction and planes could be heard flying overhead.
The New York-based watchdog said 13 people were reported killed.
The US-led coalition and the Iraqi military are the only parties known to be flying military aircraft over Iraq, but US military spokesman Col John Dorrian said the coalition had “definitively determined” it did not conduct the strike that killed civilians in Daquq.