Iraq eyes Mosul after Falluja victory over IS

Iraqi forces hunted down holdout jihadists in Falluja yesterday after retaking the city centre and trained their sights on Mosul, the Islamic State's last remaining major hub in the country.

While not fully under government control yet, Falluja is the latest in a string of battlefield losses for IS, which has seen its two-year-old "caliphate" shrink significantly in recent months.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Friday declared Falluja retaken after the national flag was raised over the main government compound, but IS fighters still hold most northern neighbourhoods.

Elite Iraqi forces "are continuing their progress in the liberation of neighbourhoods in northern Falluja", Lieutenant General Abdulwahab al-Saadi, overall commander of the operation, told AFP.

Saadi and other commanders said Iraqi forces faced only limited resistance during the major advance that saw them push into the heart of Falluja and secure a breakthrough in the four-week-old operation.

Security sources said IS members have been slipping out of the city by blending in with civilians fleeing the fighting.

Building on the momentum of the Fallujah operation, Iraq yesterday announced that joint Kurdish-federal forces were starting a new phase in the push on Mosul from the south.

"We started at 5:00 am (0200 GMT) the second phase of the liberation of Nineveh," Defence Minister Khaled al-Obeidi told AFP. "The target of the operation is to take Qayyarah and make it a launchpad for Mosul," Obeidi said.

Abadi ignored US advice to focus on Mosul last month when he declared the launch of the Fallujah operation, but he vowed on Friday that the liberation of the northern city was "very near".

The embattled premier has promised that IS would be defeated nationwide by the end of 2016, but an ongoing offensive in Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital, has achieved only modest gains so far.

The jihadist group now faces major offensives ultimately aimed at its Syria de facto capital Raqa and at Mosul.

"Mosul and Raqa could be very different battles since when they fall the delusions of holding a caliphate completely fall away," said Patrick Skinner, an analyst with the Soufan Group.