Iraqi troops enter first district inside Mosul

Iraqi troops entered the Karama district of the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul yesterday, their first advance into the city itself after two weeks of fighting in the surrounding area to dislodge the militants, an officer said.

"They have entered Mosul," General Wissam Araji of the US-trained Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) told Reuters. "They are fighting now in Hay (disrict) al-Karama."

The counter-terrorism unit resumed the offensive on the eastern front yesterday. It had paused its advance last week after it made gains quicker than forces on other fronts, to allow them to close the gap and get nearer to the city.

Iraqi security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters started the offensive on Oct 17, with air and ground support from the US-led coalition against the hardline Sunni group.

CTS will hold its advance in Karama until the forces on the other fronts advance "to protect their back," Araji said in Bazwaia, a village which was retaken from Islamic State earlier in the day, at the edge of the city's eastern suburb.

CTS also faced mortar fire as they pushed from the Christian town of Bartalla towards Mosul's eastern suburbs, AFP correspondents at the front said.

As an aircraft struck a suspected IS mortar position in the distance, a convoy of Humvees sprayed gunfire across the arid plain at an industrial area held by jihadists.

Lieutenant Colonel Muntadhar al-Shimmari said CTS had recaptured Bazwaya, one of two IS-held villages that had been standing between Iraqi forces and the eastern edges of Mosul.

CTS forces had entered the second village, Gogjali, and were battling to retake it, Staff Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al-Saadi, a senior CTS commander said.

Backed by air and ground support from a US-led coalition, tens of thousands of Iraqi fighters are converging on Mosul on different fronts, in the country's biggest military operation in years.