Iraqi militiamen battle IS southwest of Mosul

Iraqi army soldiers patrol outside a refugee
camp in Qayyarah, south of Mosul, on
October 29, 2016. Iraqi paramilitary forces
launched an operation to cut the Islamic
State group’s supply lines between its Mosul
bastion and neighbouring Syria, opening a
new front in the nearly two-week-old
offensive.
BULENT KILIC / AFP
Iraqi paramilitary forces battled the Islamic
State group south-west of Mosul on Sunday,
the second day of an operation to cut
jihadist supply lines between the city and
neighbouring Syria.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and
Kurdish peshmerga fighters have been
advancing on Mosul from the north, east
and south after the launch on October 17 of
a vast offensive to retake IS’s last
stronghold in the country.
After standing largely on the sidelines in
the first days of the assault, forces from the
Hashed al-Shaabi — a paramilitary umbrella
organisation dominated by Iran-backed
Shiite militias — began a push on Saturday
towards the west of Mosul.
The ultimate aim is the recapture of Tal
Afar, a town west of the city, and the
cutting of jihadist supply lines between
Mosul and Syria, but the Hashed still has
significant ground to cover.
In a series of statements on Sunday, the
Hashed’s media office said it had retaken
two villages, cleared another area and
entered several more.
Al-Imraini, one of the two villages the
Hashed said it recaptured, is 45 kilometres
(27 miles) from Tal Afar, according to the
media office.
The drive toward Tal Afar could bring the
fighting perilously close to the ancient city
of Hatra, a UNESCO world heritage site, and
the ruins of Nimrud — two archeological
sites that have previously been vandalised
by IS.
The involvement of Shiite militias in the
Mosul operation has been a source of
contention, though the Hashed’s top
commanders insist they do not plan to
enter the largely Sunni city.
Concerns over militias
Iraqi Kurds and Sunni Arab politicians have
opposed their involvement, as has Turkey
which has a military presence east of Mosul
despite repeated demands by Baghdad for
the forces to be withdrawn.
Relations between the Hashed and the US-
led coalition fighting IS are also tense, but
the paramilitaries enjoy widespread support
among members of Iraq’s Shiite majority.
The Hashed has been a key force in Iraq’s
campaign to retake areas seized by IS in
mid-2014, when the jihadists took control of
large parts of Syria and Iraq and declared a
cross-border “caliphate”.
But the paramilitaries have been repeatedly
accused of human rights violations during
the course of the war against IS, including
summary killings, kidnappings and
destruction of property.
Tal Afar was a Shiite-majority town of
mostly ethnic Turkmens before the Sunni
extremists of IS overran it in 2014, and its
recapture is a main goal of Shiite militia
forces.
The Sunday fighting came a day after Iraq
announced the recapture of Al-Shura, an
area south of Mosul with a long history as a
militant bastion that has been the target of
fighting for more than a week.
Iraq’s Joint Operations Command
announced “the complete liberation of Al-
Shura,” saying that security forces
advancing from four different sides had
linked up in the area, which is north of
Qayyarah base, the main hub for the
southern front.
Over 17,600 displaced
The US-led coalition — which has been
assisting federal forces and Kurdish
peshmerga with air strikes, training and
advisers for two years — said Friday that
Iraqi forces were observing a pause in the
two-week-old offensive.
In Bartalla, a Christian town just east of
Mosul, army and counter-terrorism forces
were consolidating their positions,
unloading cases of weapons from trucks
and organising their ammunition stocks.
More than 17,600 people have fled their
homes toward government-held areas since
the Mosul operation began, the
International Organization for Migration
said on Sunday.
Numbers are expected to soar as Iraqi
forces close in on the city, which is home
to more than a million people.
The UN says there have been credible
reports of IS carrying out mass executions
in the city and seizing tens of thousands of
people for use as human shields.
IS’s “depraved, cowardly strategy is to
attempt to use the presence of civilians to
render certain points, areas or military
forces immune from military operations”,
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a statement.
The jihadists are “effectively using tens of
thousands of women, men and children as
human shields,” he said.
The UN cited reports indicating IS has
forcibly taken civilians into Mosul, killing
those who resist or who were previously
members of Iraqi security forces.
It said more than 250 people were executed
in just two days earlier this week.