MOSUL
At least 25 Islamic State militants have been killed in a ground operation led by Iraqi Kurdish forces supported by U.S. airstrikes, a Kurdish commandant has claimed.
Peshmerga 7th brigade commander Colonel Bayram Abdullah told Anadolu Agency that a ground operation which begun Friday morning resulted in large losses to Islamic State militants in Bashika, a suburb of Mosul.
“Four other Islamic State militants surrendered,” Abdullah added.
The colonel claimed that militants were running critically low on food and ammunition: “At the moment we are speaking, Islamic State militants are committing suicide from desperation or attacking peshmerga forces with knives.”
A peshmerga front commander in Beshika, Hamid Efendi de Baadi, said that Iraqi Kurdish security forces had gained the control of Kanikevan and Uskuf villages in the district but had not yet entered the center of Beshika.
Hatem Eyup, a peshmerga fighter, said that IDs recovered from those killed indicated that the militants were a mix of Iraqis and other nationalities.
Iraqi Kurdish forces are cooperating with central government troops to defeat IS-led fighters who in mid-June gained control of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.
International forces are supporting peshmerga and Iraqi operations with munitions and weapons; the United States has been carrying out air strikes against IS targets.
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