The Iraqi army has launched a campaign for more than two months to retake Mosul, the second largest city in the country, from Islamic State (IS) group. However, the terrorist group is not giving up a fight.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi met with U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter on Sunday in Baghdad to discuss Iraqi forces' efforts in driving out Islamic State (IS) militants from their stronghold in Iraq's northern city of Mosul.
After almost two months of fierce battles, the Iraqi army has retaken about 50 percent of Mosul city, the second largest city in the country which was seized by the Islamic State militants in June 2014.
An air strike in Iraq has killed dozens of civilians in an area near the Syrian border still controlled by the Islamic State group, officials said.
Up to 500,000 civilians in Mosul are facing a "catastrophic" drinking water shortage, the UN warned, as Iraqi forces advance against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria group in the city.
Iraqi security forces on Wednesday fought Islamic State (IS) militants in the city of Mosul and liberated another district in the city, while a UN humanitarian organization warned of the humanitarian situation in eastern Mosul.
Fighting between Iraqi troops and Islamic State militants has cut water supplies across a large part of Mosul, where poorer families are already struggling to feed themselves, and a local official said the increasingly encircled city was in crisis.
Iraqi forces piled pressure on the Islamic State group around Mosul Thursday, moving closer to cutting off the jihadists' escape route west to Syria and thrusting deeper into the east of the city.
Iraqi Shi'ite militias said on Wednesday they had driven Islamic State fighters from an air base west of Mosul, a victory which would threaten the Sunni group's supply route from Syria to its last major stronghold in Iraq.
Islamic State claimed a series of suicide attacks that killed at least 14 people south and west of Baghdad on Monday as a U.S.-backed campaign to capture Mosul, the insurgents' last urban stronghold in Iraq, made slow progress.
Iraqi soldiers fighting just north of Mosul, within sight of city neighborhoods, said on Sunday they were ready to tighten the noose around Islamic State militants waging a brutal defense of their Iraqi stronghold.
A US-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance pushed closer to Raqa in Syria while Iraqi forces seized a key town near Mosul as offensives progressed against the two Islamic State group strongholds.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced Sunday the start of an offensive on the Islamic State (IS) military group's de facto Syrian capital of al-Raqqa, while the military operation against the IS in Iraq's Mosul is ahead of schedule.
Islamic State fighters kept up on Wednesday their fierce defense of the southern approaches to Mosul, which has held up Iraqi troops there and forced an elite army unit east of the city to put a more rapid advance on hold.
An elite unit of the Iraqi army paused its week-long advance on Mosul as it approached the city's eastern edge on Tuesday, waiting for other U.S.-backed forces to close in on Islamic State's last major urban stronghold in Iraq.
Iraqi forces advancing on Mosul faced stiff resistance from the Islamic State group despite an unprecedented wave of US-led coalition air strikes in support of the week-old offensive.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that more than 7, 000 Iraqi people are internally displaced as a result of the Mosul military operation in Iraq, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said here Monday.
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