ISIS abducts families near Mosul, attacks Kirkuk
Hundreds rounded up near besieged city, probably for use as 'human shields,' UN says
ISIS militants have taken 550 families from villages around Mosul and are holding them close to locations in the Iraqi city, probably as human shields, the UN human rights office said on Friday.
The militant group also launched a wave of co-ordinated attacks in an around the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk early on Friday that appeared to be aimed at diverting security forces from a massive offensive underway around the ISIS-held city of Mosul.
ISIS which still controls a swath of territory stretching across Syria and Iraq, has a history of launching diversionary attacks on distant fronts when it comes under pressure.
"We are gravely worried by reports that ISIL is using civilians in and around Mosul as human shields as the Iraqi forces advance, keeping civilians close to their offices or places where fighters are located, which may result in civilian casualties," UN high commissioner for human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein said in a statement, using another common acronym for ISIS.
"There is a grave danger that ISIL fighters will not only use such vulnerable people as human shields but may opt to kill them rather than see them liberated."
The office was also investigating reports that ISIS militants killed 40 civilians in one village.
Attacks in Kirkuk
ISIS' assault on Kirkuk, which lies in an oil- producing region, killed 18 members of the security forces and workers at a power station outside the city, including two Iranians, a hospital source said. Crude oil production facilities were not targeted and the power supply continued uninterrupted in the city.
Kirkuk is located east of Hawija, a pocket still under control of ISIS that lies between Baghdad and Mosul.
With air and ground support from the U.S.-led coalition, Iraqi government forces captured eight villages south and southeast of Mosul.
Kurdish forces attacking from the north and east also captured several villages, according to statements from their respective military commands overnight.
The battle for Mosul
Iraqi and Kurdish forces backed by a U.S.-led coalition launched a multi-pronged assault this week to retake Mosul and surrounding areas from ISIS. The operation is the largest undertaken by the Iraqi military since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
The offensive that started on Monday to capture Mosul is expected to become the biggest battle fought in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
The United Nations says Mosul could require the biggest humanitarian relief operation in the world, with worst-case scenario forecasts of up to a million people being uprooted. About 1.5 million residents are still believed to be inside Mosul.
The fighting has forced 5,640 people to flee their homes so far from the vicinity of the city, the International Organization for Migration said late on Thursday.
The Turkish Red Crescent said it was sending aid trucks to northern Iraq with food and humanitarian supplies for 10,000 people displaced by fighting around Mosul.
A U.S. service member died on Thursday from wounds sustained in an improvised explosive device blast near the city.
Roughly 5,000 U.S. forces are in Iraq. More than 100 of them are embedded with Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces, advising commanders and helping them ensure coalition air power hits the right targets, officials say.
However, the Kurdish military command complained that air support wasn't enough on Thursday.
"Regrettably a number of Peshmerga have paid the ultimate sacrifice for us to deliver today's gains against ISIL. Further, global coalition warplane and support were not as decisive as in the past," the Kurdish command said in a statement.
Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, addressing anti-ISIS coalition allies meeting in Paris via video link, said the offensive was advancing more quickly than planned.
ISIS deploys human shields, propaganda
A senior Kurdish military official told Reuters the offensive by the Iraqi and Kurdish forces was moving steadily as they push into villages on the outskirts of Mosul. But he expected the offensive to slow down once they approach the city itself, where ISIS had built trenches, dug tunnels and might use civilians as human shields.
"I believe it will be more clear within the coming weeks once we get rid of those villages and we come closer to the city how quickly this war will end. If they [ISIS] decide to defend the actual city then the process will slow down."
Once inside Mosul, Iraqi special forces would have to go from street to street and from neighbourhood to neighbourhood to clear explosives and booby traps, the official said.
ISIS denied that government forces had advanced. Under the headline "The crusade on Nineveh gets a lousy start," the group's weekly online magazine Al-Nabaa said it repelled assaults on all fronts, killing dozens in ambushes and suicide attacks and destroying dozens of vehicles including tanks.
In online statements, ISIS said it launched a series of couterattacks and four suicide bombings to take back villages that fell on Thursday to the army and the Kurds and that it had blocked all their fresh offensives.
With files from Associated Press