Surrender or die

Iraqi prime minister has urged the Islamic State group to surrender as government troops fought their way into jihadist-held Mosul yesterday.

Haider al-Abadi warned the jihadists they would have no place to run. "We will close in on (IS) from every place," he said on state television, dressed in a camouflage uniform.

"They don't have an exit, they don't have an escape, they can only surrender -- they can die or they can surrender," Abadi said.

Just over two weeks into the massive offensive to retake Mosul -- IS's last major stronghold in Iraq -- the army said its forces had managed to push within city limits.

Troops had "entered the Judaidat Al-Mufti area, within the left bank of the city of Mosul," the Joint Operations Command said in a statement.

Mosul is split by the Tigris River, with the eastern half of the city known as the left bank. Judaidat al-Mufti is on the southeastern side of the city.

Elite Iraqi forces had also recaptured the key village of Gogjali and taken control of a television station building on the eastern edge of the city.

Fighters from the US-trained Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) had pushed into the area amid heavy fighting on the eastern front over the past two days.

"Now is the beginning of the true liberation of the city of Mosul," Staff General Taleb Sheghati al-Kenani, the commander of CTS, told Iraqiya state television from Gogjali.

Backed by air and ground support from a US-led coalition, tens of thousands of Iraqi fighters are converging on Mosul.

Meanwhile, Turkish military has deployed tanks and artillery to southeastern districts near the Iraqi border, military sources said yesterday.

The 30-vehicle convoy left Ankara for Silopi, the sources told AFP, adding that it was now close to Adana province in southern Turkey.

Defence Minister Fikri Isik said yesterday's deployment was a part of Turkey's preparation for "important developments in the region", referring to Kurdish rebels inside the country and events in Iraq.

"Turkey is preparing in advance for whatever happens (and) this is one element of that," he said, quoted by the official news agency Anadolu.

Humanitarian organisations have been fighting against the clock to build up the capacity to handle the possible mass exodus from Mosul.

The United Nations says up to a million people could be displaced in the coming weeks.

More than 17,900 people have already fled their homes since the operation began, according to the International Organization for Migration.

The UN said yesterday it had received more reports of IS fighters forcing thousands of civilians into Mosul, possibly to be used as human shields.

In the early hours of Monday, IS fighters "brought dozens of long trucks and mini-buses to Hamam al-Alil City, south of Mosul, in an attempt to forcibly transfer some 25,000 civilians towards locations in and around Mosul," the UN rights office said in a statement.