At 5m on the second day of an offensive a Peshmerga commander and his men were gearing up to liberate three more villages from the Islamic State (ISIS).
Before the offensive was launched, commander Mansour Barzani said, “ISIS will flee today and cannot fight off the Peshmerga.”
Peshmerga on the ground, and warplanes from the air struck ISIS. The plan was set to liberate three villages, Hasudiya, Kanhashai Bchuk and Kanhashi Gawra, and ultimately reaching Gwer bridge.
The Peshmerga broke into Kanhashi Gawra and did not let ISIS militants flee.The militants were defeated and all killed in the village. and their dead bodies fell into Peshmerga hands.
According to the military, 130 militants were killed in two days. Peshmerga commanders say ISIS never expected Peshmerga would capture these areas.
“ISIS thought they could defend themselves in all these villages and they never imagined the Peshmerga could so quickly capture these areas from them,” Najat Ali, commander of the Peshmerga forces on the Makhmour front, told Rudaw.
Ali added that “President of the Kurdistan Region Masoud Barzani] is always in contact with us and he observes everything of the battle, if he knows there is a sniper left at a village, he tells us why he is still there, what is the problem? And he is very serious on everything in the battlefields.”
He went on to say that “For example, yesterday in the Abzakh village there was fire exchanges. He called us asking ‘is the sniper killed yet?’ and I answered him and told him that he was killed.”
ISIS had dug long and deep tunnels to fortify their positions. But now the area is held by the Peshmerga and ISIS became part of the history.
The final push against ISIS in Mosul is getting closer. Peshmerga are 47km away from the city on this front.
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