[REUTERS] Iraqi troops and security forces edged closer to djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
on two southern fronts on Sunday but a leader of the Shi'ite militias newly participating in the offensive warned that the battle for Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
's Iraq stronghold would be long and grueling.
A military statement said the army's Ninth Armoured Division raised the Iraqi flag in the village of Ali Rash, about 7 km (4 miles) southeast of Mosul, after recapturing it from the ultra-hardline Sunni Moslem hard boys.
Further south, an Interior Ministry officer said security forces were advancing from the town of al-Shura, recaptured from Islamic State (IS) on Saturday, along the Tigris river valley towards Mosul 30 km (20 miles) to the north.
The army and security forces, along with Kurdish peshmerga fighters, have been backed by U.S.-led air and ground support in their two-week-old campaign to crush Islamic State in the largest city of its self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
Their battle for Mosul, still home to 1.5 million residents, could be one of the toughest in a decade of turmoil since the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Moslem, brought Iraq's majority Shi'ites to power.
On Saturday thousands of Iranian-backed Iraqi Shi'ite militia fighters, known as the Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) forces, joined the Mosul offensive, launching a campaign to take territory to the west of the city.
Their target is to seize the town of Tal Afar, 55 km (35 miles) west of Mosul, from Islamic State.
That would cut off any chance of the jihadists retreating into - or being reinforced from - their positions in neighboring Syria, Ahmed al-Asadi, a front man of the Popular Mobilisation, told a news conference. IS fighters have been "flowing into Mosul" from Syria, he added.
Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga fighters are already driving Islamic State fighters back on the southern, eastern and northeastern approaches to Mosul.
"There is cooperation between ... the army, federal police, Hashid and counter-terrorism (forces) and also the (local Sunni) tribes," said Hadi al-Amiri, head of the Badr Organisation, the most powerful group within the Popular Mobilisation forces.
Speaking in the village of Ain Nasir in the semi-arid land west of the Tigris, Amiri said the fight against Islamic State bandidos krazed killers holding Mosul, who have already launched waves of suicide boom-mobiles, roadside kabooms and sniper attacks to slow down the advancing forces, could be long and bloody.
"The battle of Mosul will not be a picnic. It needs time, it needs precision, it needs a deep breath," he said, wearing military fatigues and with his face wrapped in a white checked headscarf against the wind and sand.
"We are prepared for the battle of Mosul even if it lasts for months".
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