Iraqi peshmerga storm IS town

BASHIQA, Iraq: Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces stormed 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 Jihadists in its eastern neighbourhoods.

As the operation against Islamic State´s Iraqi stronghold entered its fourth week, fighters across the border launched an offensive in the Syrian half of the Jihadist group´s self-declared caliphate, targeting its base in the city of Raqqa.

An alliance of US-backed Kurdish and Arab groups launched the campaign for Raqqa, where Islamic State has been dug in for nearly three years, with an assault on territory about 50 km to the north which they have dubbed Euphrates Anger.

The battle for Raqqa will be every bit as challenging as the one for Mosul, with both cities carrying huge strategic and symbolic value to the Jihadists and their self-declared caliphate covering territory in both Syria and Iraq.

The Iraqi operation, involving a 100,000-strong alliance of troops, security forces, Kurdish peshmerga and militias, backed by US-led air strikes and a global consensus against the Jihadis, has so far gained just a small foothold in Mosul.

The Raqqa campaign, launched amid a complex civil war in Syria which has divided world powers, is not coordinated with President Bashar al-Assad or the Syrian army.

The Kurdish element of SDF groups fighting towards Raqqa also makes them an unlikely force to recapture the Arab city.

"It is difficult to put a time frame on the operation at present.

The battle will not be easy," a Syrian Kurdish source said.

In Bashiqa, some 15 km from Mosul, the first waves of a 2,000-strong peshmerga force entered the town on foot and in armoured vehicles or Humvees.

Artillery earlier pounded the town, which lies on the Nineveh plains at the foot of a mountain.

"Our aim is to take control and clear out all the Daesh (Islamic State) militants," Lieutenant-Colonel Safeen Rasoul told Reuters.

Islamic State fighters have sought to slow the offensive on their Mosul stronghold with waves of suicide car bomb attacks.