BASHIQA, IRAQ Â Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces attacked an Islamic State-held town northeast of Mosul on Monday, trying to clear a pocket of militants outside the city while Iraqi troops wage a fierce urban war with the militants in its eastern neighborhoods.
The first waves of a 2,000-strong peshmerga force entered Bashiqa, some in armored vehicles or Humvees and others on foot, after artillery pounded the town at the foot of a mountain about 15 km (10 miles) across the Nineveh plains from Mosul.
“Our aim is to take control and clear out all the Daesh (Islamic State) militants,” Lieutenant-Colonel Safeen Rasoul told Reuters. “Our estimates are there are about 100 still left and 10 suicide cars.”
Islamic State fighters have sought to slow the offensive on their Mosul stronghold, which entered its fourth week on Monday, with waves of suicide car bomb attacks. Iraqi commanders say there have been 100 on the eastern front and 140 in the south.
A top Kurdish official told Reuters on Sunday the militants had also deployed drones strapped with explosives, long-range artillery shells filled with chlorine gas and mustard gas and trained snipers.
As a peshmerga column moved into Bashiqa on Monday, a loud explosion rocked the convoy, and two large plumes of white smoke could be seen just 50 feet (15 meters) away. A peshmerga officer said two suicide car bombs had tried to hit the advancing force.
In eastern districts of Mosul, which Iraqi special forces broke into last week, officers say militants melted into the population, ambushing and isolating troops in what the special forces spokesman called the world’s “toughest urban warfare”.
