MANGUBA VILLAGE, Iraq — Three ambulances rushed through the last checkpoint and another, sirens blaring, exited at the Khazir front on the morning of May 29. A military operation, part of a push toward Mosul in Iraq’s northwestern Ninevah province, had started a few hours earlier, around 5 a.m., and would continue into the following day. Trucks rushed to and from the front, with light-reflecting sheets covering their hoods to prevent aircraft from the US-led international coalition from mistaking them for Islamic State (IS) vehicles.
“Around 6,000 peshmerga and [the elite paramilitary] Zerevani forces are involved,” Gen. Sheikh Ato Zebari, the deputy head of the Khazir front, told Al-Monitor at a nearby base. Gen. Dedewan Khorsheed Tofeq added that the operation west of Erbil would push IS farther from Gwer and the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), enabling more freedom of movement for forces hoping to push toward Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, still firmly under IS control.
The two-day operation was the largest the peshmerga had taken part in since the campaign to liberate Sinjar in November. The aim at the moment, Zebari said, was to retake several villages that had been inhabited by Kakai and Shabak, Kurdish minority groups, as well as other Kurds and Christians, before IS captured them in June 2014. The territory involved covers some 14 miles, from the village of Hassan Shami to Wardak. The area had been disputed by the Iraqi central government and the KRG prior to IS seizing Mosul and the surrounding area in summer 2014.
“The offensive should result in control over both sides of the Khazir River and prepare the way for successive stages toward the long-anticipated retaking of Mosul,” Zebari said. “Support from Canadian, French, British and US aircraft are playing an extremely important role in the operation, while the main problems are IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and suicide bombers.” Tofeq added that IS had recently been using a significant number of suicide bombers on motorcycles, posing a threat to areas near the capital.
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