IS surrounded in Mosul

Iraqi-led forces have cut off the Islamic State group's last supply line from Mosul to Syria, completing the isolation of the jihadist stronghold, security officials said yesterday.

Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) paramilitary forces reached the road linking Tal Afar to Sinjar, west of Mosul, and linked up with Kurdish forces there, the officials said.

"Hashed forces have cut off the Tal Afar-Sinjar road," senior Hashed commander Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis said on social media, referring to two towns on the road linking Mosul to Syria.

A Kurdish security official told AFP that Hashed forces had linked up with other anti-IS forces, including Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighters, in three villages in the area.

Iraqi forces launched a major offensive on October 17 to retake Mosul, which is the country's second city and where jihadist supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed a caliphate in 2014.

Federal forces have already entered the city from the east, Kurdish peshmerga and other forces are also closing in from the north and south and only the west had remained open.

The latest development will make it very long and dangerous for IS if it attempts to move fighters and equipment between Mosul and the Syrian city of Raqa, the last two bastions of their crumbling "caliphate".

IS has been targeting civilians who try to escape the heavy fighting in and around Mosul, leaving medical facilities struggling to cope with the number of people in need of trauma care.

Around 200 people - at least 40 of them civilians - have needed emergency care for gunshot wounds in the last week, UN OCHA, the UN's humanitarian agency said, including women and children with life threatening and complex injuries from sniper fire.

Existing trauma centres around Mosul are completely unequipped to deal with the rise in casualties, OCHA said in its latest weekly report on the humanitarian situation in the fight for Mosul, with partner agencies working around the clock to try and free up additional facilities.

More than 69,000 people have fled the frontlines as the US-backed Iraqi coalition's battle for control of the Isis-controlled city grinds on.

But at least one million remain trapped as IS struggles to retain Mosul, by far the largest city in its possession and its last remaining stronghold in Iraq since it took over the area in 2014.

The built-up city and the nature of urban warfare has slowed the coalition's progress considerably.  Thousands of people are being forcibly moved as human shields at strategic locations, monitors report, and IS has managed to rig streets and bridges with hundreds of bombs and landmines as well as launching mortar and rocket fire.

Suicide bombers driving through areas they know well are another major hazard for advancing Iraqi troops: they can appear in a matter of seconds and wound or kill entire units.