Iraqi special forces battle Islamic State militants inside the Mosul University campus on the second day of fierce clashes in the complex. Rough Cut (no reporter narration). </s> MOSUL, Iraq — Iraq's special forces worked Sunday to clear neighborhoods on the eastern edge of Islamic State-held Mosul as bombings launched by the extremist group elsewhere in the country killed at least 20 people.

The Mosul offensive has slowed in recent days as Iraqi forces have pushed into more densely populated areas, where they cannot rely as much on airstrikes and shelling because of the risk posed to civilians, who have been told to stay in their homes.

"There are a lot of civilians and we are trying to protect them," said Lt. Col. Muhanad al-Timimi. "This is one of the hardest battles that we've faced till now."

Some civilians are fleeing the combat zone, while IS militants are holding others back for use as human shields, making it harder for Iraqi commanders on the ground to get approval for requested U.S.-led coalition air strikes. Iraq's special forces are some of the country's best troops, but they still largely rely on air support to clear terrain.

Iraqi forces first entered the eastern edge of the city on Tuesday. On Friday, forces began pushing into Mosul proper, but so far have advanced just over a kilometer (mile) into the city.

On the southern front, Iraqi forces are still some 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the city center. The fighting is centered on the town of Hamam al-Alil, where Associated Press journalists could hear gunfire and saw attack helicopters firing on IS positions.

Kurdish peshmerga fighters launched mortar rounds and fired heavy artillery at the IS-held town of Bashiqa, about 8 miles (13 kilometers) northeast of Mosul. The town, which is believed to be largely empty except for IS militants, has been encircled by Kurdish forces.

The extremists captured Mosul and surrounding areas in 2014, and have had plenty of time to dig trenches, block off roads and mine approaches to the city.

"Daesh dug trenches that they filled with water and they have a lot of suicide attackers and car bombs," said al-Timimi, using the Arabic acronym for the IS group.

The extremists meanwhile struck far from the front lines with a series of bombings.

The deadliest attack took place in the city of Samarra, 60 miles (95 kilometers) north of Baghdad, which is home to a major Shiite shrine. Provincial spokesman Ali al-Hamdani said the attacker set off a bomb-packed ambulance in a parking lot near Shiite pilgrims before detonating his explosives vest.

The attack killed 11 people, including at least four Iranians, and wounded up to 100 other people.

Another suicide attacker rammed an explosives-laden car into a busy checkpoint outside the city of Tikrit, killing at least nine people. Al-Hamdani said five female students, a woman and three policemen were killed in the attack, while 25 others were wounded.

IS had also captured Tikrit during its lightning blitz across Iraq in the summer of 2014. Iraqi forces drove the militants from the city, around 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of Baghdad, in April 2015.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bahram Ghasemi, condemned the two attacks, which he said had killed 21 people, including 10 Iranian pilgrims, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the conflicting tolls, which are common in the chaotic aftermath of attacks.

In an online statement, IS claimed all three bombings and said the ambulance bomb was set off by a second suicide attacker. The AP could not verify the authenticity of the statement, which was posted on a militant website commonly used by the extremists.

In the capital, Baghdad, a series of smaller bombings killed at least 10 people and wounded 21 others, according to police and medical officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters. No one immediately claimed the attacks, but they bore the hallmarks of IS.

Associated Press writers Sinan Salaheddin and Murtada Faraj in Baghdad, Cristiana Mesquita near Bashiqa, Iraq, Balint Szlanko near Hamam al-Alil, Iraq, and Maamoun Youssef in Cairo contributed to this report. </s> BAGHDAD – Iraqi forces backed by the U.S.-led international coalition fought their way Thursday into a sprawling military base outside of Mosul and onto the grounds of the city’s airport, taking control of the runway amid fierce exchanges of fire with Islamic State group militants.

The two-pronged advance is part of a major assault that started earlier this week to drive IS from the western half of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city

Iraqi federal police units, backed by regular army forces, entered the airport Thursday morning, according to two police officials who said heavy clashes were underway hours later with IS militants hunkered down inside several airport buildings.

The officials said coalition troops were with the advancing forces, though they didn’t specify the nationalities of the foreign forces. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

Private broadcaster Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen aired live footage from the Mosul airport perimeter, showing a military helicopter buzzing overheard and firing at IS positions as gunfire rattled.

By early afternoon, federal police commander Maj. Gen. Raid Shakir Jawdat told Iraqi state TV that his troops have control of “more than half” of the airport complex. Jawdat added that about 200 families were evacuated to safe areas in government-controlled areas.

Separately, Iraqi special forces entered the Ghazlani military base next to the airport on the southern edge of the city, the spokesman of the Joint Military Operation Command, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, told the AP.

Rasool said heavy clashes were underway inside the base. He did not provide more details.

On Sunday, after weeks of preparations, Iraqi forces officially launched the operation to take Mosul’s western half, with the Iraqi regular army and federal police forces taking part in the initial push. Since then, the military says they have retaken some 120 square kilometers — nearly 50 square miles — south of the city.

Thursday marked the first time the Iraqi special forces, which played a key role in securing the eastern half of the city, joined the fight for western Mosul.

“The counterterrorism forces will be an additional force, which will expedite the liberation of Mosul’s western side,” Rasool said.

Also on Thursday, another counterterrorism unit captured a key village southwest of Mosul from where Islamic State group snipers and shelling had been slowing the government offensive, Rasool said. IS had used Tell al-Rayan to position snipers and fire off rockets and mortar rounds to derail the advance of the Iraqi troops, he said.

Another special forces officer said IS targeted the advancing troops with a suicide car bomb and dozens of bombs dropped from a drone. The officer, who also condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to brief the media, said his troops sustained at least a dozen casualties, but many were light injuries.

Making up for a lack of fighters, IS militants are increasingly relying on modified commercial drones to guide suicide car bombers to their targets and to launch small-scale airstrikes on Iraqi forces.

Among those who fled the fighting was Hamad Khalaf, who walked out of Maamoun neighborhood south of Mosul along with his wife and four children as convoys of Iraqi vehicles passed by.

“There are many injured still inside,” said a dust-covered Khalaf of his neighborhood south of Mosul.

“We’ve been walking since the morning,” his wife Badriya said as she held her 1 1 / 2-year-old daughter. A few meters behind them a mortar fired from inside Mosul hit a nearby hill.

In January, Iraqi authorities declared the eastern half of Mosul “fully liberated” from IS. The battle for western Mosul, the extremist group’s last major urban bastion in Iraq, is expected to be most daunting yet.

The streets are older and narrower in the western section of the city, stretching west from the Tigris River that divides Mosul into the eastern and western half. The dense urban environment will likely force Iraqi soldiers to leave the relative safety of their armored vehicles. The presence of up to 750,000 civilians also poses a challenge.

Mosul fell to IS in the summer of 2014, along with large swaths of northern and western Iraq. But the Sunni militant group has since consistently lost territory as the U.S.-led coalition proved to be critical for Iraqi government efforts to claw back territory lost to the extremists.

IS has suffered losses in Syria as well: Turkish troops and Syrian opposition forces seized the center of the Islamic State-held town of al-Bab on Thursday, breaking a weeks-long deadlock between the two sides at the periphery of the town, Turkey’s state news agency and opposition activists said. The northern Syrian town in Aleppo province is one of the militants’ last urban strongholds in Syria west of Raqqa, the Islamic State group’s de facto capital.

Also part of the Mosul battle but on its fringes, are government-sanctioned paramilitary forces, made up mainly of Shiite militiamen.

The militias this week launched their own new push to capture IS-held villages west of Mosul. The efforts by the militias, an umbrella group known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, are likely coordinated with government efforts.

The capture of Mosul International Airport and the adjacent Ghazlani base would be a major boost for the Iraqi forces in the fight for western Mosul. The Shiite militias already hold a small airport outside Tal Afar, a city located west of Mosul toward the Syrian border.

Associated Press writers Susannah George south of Mosul and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report. </s> Iraqi special forces advance towards the western side of Mosul, Iraq, Thursday, Feb. 23, 2017. The advance comes as part of a major assault that started five days earlier to drive Islamic State militants from the western half of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city. (AP Photo/ Khalid Mohammed)

BAGHDAD (AP) — The Latest on the Iraqi forces' battle to take the western half of Mosul from the Islamic State militants (all times local):

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi says the Iraqi air force has carried out its first airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Syria.

A statement from al-Abadi says the attacks targeted the towns of Boukamal and Husseibah and came in response to bombings in Baghdad that have been claimed by IS and linked to the militants' operations in Syria.

An Iraqi air force commander says the airstrikes were carried out with F-16 warplanes at dawn on Friday and "were successful."

The commander says they were conducted on the orders of the prime minister. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

The airstrikes are first ones by Iraq against IS in Syria that have been publicly acknowledged. They come as Iraq's military is fighting IS in western part of the city of Mosul.

The U.S.-led coalition and Russia also carry out airstrikes against IS in Syria.

Iraqi officials say their forces have entered the first neighborhood of the western half of Mosul and have gained full control of the city's airport after fierce clashes with Islamic State militants.

Two special forces officials and a federal police official told The Associated Press about the developments in the Mosul advances on Friday. The gains come as Iraqi forces continue to push into the western part of this city, which is still in the hands of the Islamic State group.

All three officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

Iraqi forces launched the operation to retake western Mosul on Sunday, weeks after the city's east was declared "fully liberated" from the militants in January.

Two Iraqi officials say that after a day of fierce fighting, Iraqi forces have secured half of Mosul's airport and most of a sprawling military base next to it on the city's southwestern edge.

A federal police officer and an official overseeing the operation said on Friday that troops also secured key infrastructure as they advance to rout the Islamic State group from western Mosul.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Iraq's federal police, special forces and the army are taking part in the battle, which started Sunday.

Iraqi authorities declared Mosul's eastern half "fully liberated" in January and afterward largely paused operations to prepare for the fight for the city's west.

The United Nations estimated that about 750,000 civilians are trapped in western Mosul. </s> BAGHDAD — The Iraqi army says troops have entered another held by the Islamic State group in the southeastern part of Mosul.

The commander of a joint operations that oversees the Mosul campaign, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Yarellah, says that soldiers from the 9th Division took over the hospital building in the al-Salam on Tuesday.

He did not provide more details but said the troops "continue clearing" the from IS militants.

Iraqi forces, backed the U.S.-led international coalition, launched a campaign in October to retake Mosul, the country's second largest city and IS's last major urban bastion in Iraq.

Most gains have been made by special forces operating in the section of Mosul east of the Tigris River, while other forces are advancing on the city from other directions. </s> An Iraqi officer says U.S.-backed Iraqi forces are moving to surround Mosul's Old City a week after launching a fresh push to drive Islamic State militants from areas they still hold.

Iraqi special forces Lt. Gen. Sami al-Arathi said Thursday that battle plans changed and a northern advance was launched last week after Iraqi forces struggled to push into the Old City from the south.

The operation to retake Mosul began nearly seven months ago, and the eastern half of the city was retaken earlier this year. The battle for the more densely populated western half, including the Old City, has been slower.

The U.N. estimates some 350,000 people remain trapped in IS-held Mosul. Clashes over the past week have forced more than 11,000 civilians to flee. </s> MOSUL, Iraq -- Iraq's special forces worked Sunday to clear neighborhoods on the eastern edge of Islamic State-held Mosul as bombings launched by the extremist group elsewhere in the country killed at least 20 people.

The Mosul offensive has slowed in recent days as Iraqi forces have pushed into more densely populated areas, where they cannot rely as much on airstrikes and shelling because of the risk posed to civilians, who have been told to stay in their homes.

"There are a lot of civilians and we are trying to protect them," said Lt. Col. Muhanad al-Timimi. "This is one of the hardest battles that we've faced till now."

Some civilians are fleeing the combat zone, while Islamic State militants are holding others back for use as human shields, making it harder for Iraqi commanders on the ground to get approval for requested U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. Iraq's special forces are some of the country's best troops, but they still largely rely on air support to clear terrain.

Iraqi forces first entered the eastern edge of the city Tuesday. On Friday, forces began pushing into Mosul proper, but so far have advanced just over a mile into the city.

Still, the White House envoy to the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition, Brett McGurk, told reporters in Jordan on Sunday that the offensive is "ahead of schedule."

Iraqi forces stand to receive a boost with Sunday's launch of an offensive against the Islamic State-held city of Raqqa in northern Syria, the self-declared capital of the extremist group's self-styled caliphate. That operation, launched by U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian forces, could force the extremists to split their forces to defend the two largest cities still under their control.

On the southern front of the Mosul battle, Iraqi forces are still some 12 miles from the city center. The fighting was centered on the town of Hamam al-Alil, where Associated Press journalists could hear gunfire and saw attack helicopters firing on Islamic State positions.

Kurdish peshmerga fighters launched mortar rounds and fired heavy artillery at the Islamic State-held town of Bashiqa, about 8 miles northeast of Mosul. The town, which is believed to be largely empty except for Islamic State militants, has been encircled by Kurdish forces.

The extremists captured Mosul and surrounding areas in 2014, and have had plenty of time to dig trenches, block roads and mine approaches to the city.

"Daesh dug trenches that they filled with water, and they have a lot of suicide attackers and car bombs," said al-Timimi, using the Arabic acronym for the militant group.

The extremists, meanwhile, struck far from the front lines with a series of bombings.

The deadliest attack took place in the city of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, which is home to a major Shiite shrine. Provincial spokesman Ali al-Hamdani said the attacker set off a bomb-packed ambulance in a parking lot near Shiite pilgrims before detonating his explosives vest.

The attack killed 11 people, including at least four Iranians, and wounded up to 100 other people.

Another suicide attacker rammed an explosives-laden car into a busy checkpoint outside the city of Tikrit, killing at least nine people. Al-Hamdani said five female students, a woman and three policemen were killed in that attack, while 25 others were wounded.

The Islamic State had also captured Tikrit during its lightning blitz across Iraq in the summer of 2014. Iraqi forces drove the militants from the city, around 80 miles north of Baghdad, in April 2015.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bahram Ghasemi, condemned the two attacks, which he said had killed 21 people, including 10 Iranian pilgrims, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the conflicting tolls, which are common in the chaotic aftermath of attacks.

In an online statement, the Islamic State claimed all three bombings and said the ambulance bomb was set off by a second suicide attacker. The AP could not verify the authenticity of the statement, which was posted on a militant website commonly used by the extremists.

The Hassan Sham camp, about 20 miles east of Mosul, opened Friday to help handle the exodus of civilians after government troops battled their way into the city last week.

More than 8,000 people had fled by Saturday, bringing the total number displaced since the offensive began to about 30,000, according to United Nations estimates.

They arrived in dump trucks and on foot, carrying their belongings in large bags, wrapped in bedding and tarps.

Relatives were waiting outside the camp's chain-link fence.

Waeed Ahmed Hussein had not seen his parents and four brothers in almost three years, since the extremists seized the Iraqi city and their nearby village of Gogjali, and he fled.

When Hussein, 32, spotted his father in the camp's screening area, he rushed over to kiss the elderly man's hands through the fence.

"Uncle, uncle!" cried his 6-year-old nephew, Idris, sprinting out of the gate to hug him.

Humanitarian groups had warned before the offensive began nearly three weeks ago that as many as a million people could be displaced, and that camps were unprepared because of lack of funding.

In addition to Hassan Sham, the U.N. refugee agency is building 10 more camps, but only half are ready to receive people.

Hassan Sham now houses about 4,000 people and can accommodate 7,000 more. But with the volume of families streaming in, officials expect they will soon have to build another camp nearby.

More than 200 families arrived Saturday and more than 600 on Friday, said Sadiq Mohammed, deputy camp manager. The Khazir camp up the road was already full of those displaced from eastern villages.

For civilians caught in the fighting, the route to safety is a perilous one.

Hussein's older brother, Saad Ahmed Hussein, said that when the family fled their village east of Mosul on Saturday morning, they were targeted by Islamic State snipers and mortar fire.

Iraqi forces had freed the village, but militants sneaked back in using tunnels near the graveyard, he said.

He tried to persuade his eldest brother to leave with the rest of the family, but he has several small children, including a toddler. "He said, 'I prefer to die here,'" Saad Ahmed Hussein said.

New arrivals at the camp complained about a lack of food, water, bedding and latrines. They worried about tents filling up, and where their children would go to school.

But many of the children seemed oblivious to their parents' struggles, exploring the tents, playing ball with stones and hide-and-seek in the latrines.

As Idris said, "It's better than dying."

Information for this article was contributed by Susannah George, Sinan Salaheddin, Murtada Faraj, Cristiana Mesquita, Balint Szlanko, Maamoun Youssef and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the Los Angeles Times. </s> MOSUL, Iraq (AP) — The Iraqi army on Tuesday pushed into another neighborhood held by the Islamic State group on the southeastern edge of Mosul, according to a military statement and Iraqi commanders on the ground.

The commander of a joint operations center that oversees the Mosul campaign, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Yarellah, said that soldiers from the 9th Division took over the hospital building in the al-Salam neighborhood.

"The hospital was a Daesh base," said Iraqi army Lt. Ahmed Abu Fadl, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

"They were treating their wounded there," he added, explaining that he hoped retaking the building would hurt the militants' ability to launch organized counterattacks.

Iraqi troops pushed past barricades made of dirt and rubble to slowly cross the main road marking the front line on the edge of al-Salam. The front had remained static for weeks as Iraqi forces slowly cleared homes and built up defenses before Tuesday's push.

IS snipers perched in the minarets of nearby mosques fired on the advancing troops and a suicide car bomb struck one of the convoys. At least two military vehicles carrying the wounded could be seen speeding back from the front.

"Starting before dawn we heard more than 20 airstrikes," said Fathii Muhammad Yousef who took cover from the clashes with his family in their home just a block from the front. For the past month Iraqi forces have clashed with IS fighters on the streets just outside Yousef's home. Four of his neighbors have been wounded by gunfire and shrapnel so far in the operation.

As the fight has ground on, Yousef's family has run out of water and is running low on food. "All we have now is well water, it's not clean enough to drink, but what else can we do?" he said, explaining the water is making some of his youngest children sick.

Clashes in Salam neighborhood continued into the evening.

Iraqi forces, backed the U.S.-led international coalition, launched a campaign in October to retake Mosul, the country's second largest city and IS's last major urban bastion in Iraq. Most gains have been made by special forces operating in the section of Mosul east of the Tigris River, while other forces are advancing on the city from other directions.

In an audio recording published online, the newly-appointed spokesman of IS, Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir, urged the fighters in Mosul and the Syrian city of Raqqa to keep up the fight and not to retreat. In his nearly 30-minute speech, al-Muhajir called on Muslims and "Caliphate soldiers" to strike inside Turkey and against its diplomatic missions as well as launching attacks in other parts of the world.

It was not clear when the recording was produced; it was distributed by the militant group's al-Furqan media arm late Monday night. Al-Muhajir replaced Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, who was killed in an airstrike in August.

IS captured Mosul in the summer of 2014 as part of a blitz that placed nearly a third of Iraq under their control, along large swaths of neighboring Syria. Iraqi troops, federal police and allied Shiite and Sunni militias have over the past year pushed IS militants from most of the vast Sunni province of Anbar, west of Baghdad, and areas to the north and east of the Iraqi capital. </s> BAGHDAD—U.S.-backed Iraqi forces were moving to surround Mosul’s Old City on Thursday, a week after launching a fresh push to drive Daesh militants from areas they still hold, according to an Iraqi officer overseeing the operation.

Iraqi special forces Lt. Gen. Sami al-Arathi said battle plans had changed and a northern advance was launched last week after Iraqi forces struggled to push into the Old City from the south.

As Iraqi army and federal police forces push from the north, the country’s special forces are moving toward the Old City through Mosul’s western industrial neighbourhoods.

“The multi-axis advance . . . has presented the enemy with more dilemmas than they can react to,” U.S.-led coalition spokesperson John Dorrian told reporters during a press conference Wednesday. Dorrian said over the past week Iraqi forces retook more than 30 square kilometres of terrain from Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
Iraqi Special Operations Forces have fought their way into the outskirts of Mosul.