US-led coalition troops assisting Kurds in new offensive: spokesman
Servicemen from the US-led coalition are assisting Kurdish Peshmerga forces in a new offensive in Iraq that aims to retake a handful of villages from Islamic State east of their Mosul stronghold, a coalition spokesman said on May 29.
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| Kurdish Peshmerga forces keep watch in a village east of Mosul, Iraq, May 29, 2016 |
They spoke in English but their nationality was not clear. Reuters had earlier reported that they were American but this could not be confirmed officially.
"US and coalition forces are conducting advise and assist operations to help Kurdish Peshmerga forces," US Army Colonel Steve Warren, the spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Baghdad told Reuters, commenting on the ground deployment of coalition soldiers seen near the battle front.
He said he could not confirm which country those seen by Reuters were from.
Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the early hours of May 29 launched an attack to dislodge Islamic State fighters from villages located about 20 km (13 miles) east of Mosul alongside the road to the Kurdish capital, Erbil.
Gunfire and airstrikes could be heard at a distance, while Apache helicopters flew overhead. One of the villages, Mufti, was captured by mid-day, the Kurdistan Region Security Council said in a statement.
About 5,500 Peshmergas are taking part in May 29's operation, said the Kurdish Region Security council.
"This is one of the many shaping operations expected to increase pressure on ISIL in and around Mosul in preparation for an eventual assault on the city,'' the council said.
"It's also to push ISIS threat away from the Kurdish area," a Kurdish officer, Akram Mohammed, said in Hassan Shami, referring to one of the acronyms of Islamic State, the hardline Sunni militants who seized large amounts of territory in Syria and Iraq two years ago.
The Peshmerga have driven the militants back in northern Iraq last year with the help of airstrikes from a US-led coalition, and are positioned around Mosul in an arc running from northwest of the city to southeast.
The Iraqi army is also keeping up the pressure on Islamic State in their stronghold of Falluja, 50 kilometers (32 miles) west of Baghdad, in central Iraq.
Backed by Shi'ite militias on the ground and airstrikes from the US-led coalition, the army is about to complete the encirclement of the city in an operation that started on May 23, state TV said on May 29 citing military statements.
Counter-terrorism forces specialized in urban warfare have taken up positions around Falluja and should begin advancing in inside the city when the encirclement is complete, the TV said.
