The Iraqi army is trying to reach a town south of Mosul where Islamic State has reportedly executed dozens to deter any attempt to support the US-led offensive on the city.
A member of the Iraqi government forces takes a position on top of a vehicle as smoke rises on the outskirts of the Qayyarah area, some 60km south of Mosul Photo: AFP
Eleven days into what is expected to be the biggest ground offensive in Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003, army and federal police units were fighting off sniper fire and suicide car bombs south of Hammam al-Alil, the site of the reported executions, an Iraqi military spokesman said.
The militants shot dead dozens of prisoners there, most of them former members of the Iraqi police and army, taken from villages the group has been forced to abandon as the troops advanced, officials in the region said.
The executions were meant "to terrorise the others, those who are in Mosul in particular", and also to get rid of the prisoners, a member of the Nineveh provincial council, Abdul Rahman al-Waggaa, said.
Some of the families of those executed are also held in Hammam al-Alil, he said.
UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said Islamic State fighters had reportedly killed scores of people around Mosul in the last week.
A Reuters correspondent met relatives of hostages south of Mosul, including a police officer who had returned to see the family that he had left behind when his village fell under the militants' control two years ago.
"I'm afraid they will keep pulling them back from village to village until they get to Mosul. And then they will disappear," he said, asking not be identified to protect family members still in the hands of the fighters.
Reuters also spoke to a woman and an elderly man who were part of group of families forced to march two to three days to reach Mosul from the villages of Safiya and Ellezaga, about 30km and 50km to the south.
Children and the elderly were released when they arrived in Mosul, on Tuesday, and told to stay with relatives, they said, speaking on the phone from one of the few places where there is still telephone coverage, on the city's edges.
A resident of Mosul, Rayyan, said he saw the families when they arrived in the city, "their bare feet bleeding and covered with dust as if coming from under the rubble."
"We cried when we saw them," he said.
Iraqi forces deploy in the area of al-Shourah, some 45 kms south of Mosul, as they advance towards the city to retake it from the Islamic State. Photo: AFP
Fierce defence
Islamic State fighters are keeping up their fierce defence of the southern approaches to Mosul, which has held up Iraqi troops there and forced an elite army unit east of the city to put a more rapid advance on hold.
Hundreds of Islamic State militants are thought to have been killed since Iraqi forces launched the offensive last week, the US military said.
Two generals said the jihadist group had suffered the losses as troops and allied fighters, backed by US-led air strikes, advanced on several axes.
Up to 5000 IS fighters were believed to be in Mosul ahead of the assault.
The fall of Mosul would mark Islamic State's effective defeat in Iraq.
The city is many times bigger than any other that the ultra-hardline militant group has ever captured, and it was from its Grand Mosque in 2014 that the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared a 'caliphate' that also spans parts of Syria.
US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Tuesday an attack on Raqqa, Islamic State's main stronghold in Syria, would start while the battle of Mosul was still unfolding.
It was the first official suggestion that US-backed forces in both countries could mount simultaneous operations to crush the caliphate.
The front lines east and north of Mosul have moved much closer to the edges of the city than the southern front and the combat ahead is likely to get more deadly as 1.5 million residents remain in the city.
Worst-case UN forecasts see up to a million people being uprooted. UN aid agencies said the fighting had so far forced about 16,000 people to flee.
"Assessments have recorded a significant number of female-headed households, raising concerns around the detention or capture of men and boys," the office of the UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq said on Wednesday.
The coordinator, Lise Grande, said a mass exodus could happen, maybe within the next few days.
