Kurdish member of the Freedom Party of Kurdistan (PAK) holds a position on November 6, 2016 in an area near the town of Bashiqa, some 25 kilometres north east of Mosul. / AFP / SAFIN HAMED
Arbil, Iraq: Iraqi Kurdish forces on Monday launched an assault on a jihadist-held town near the northern city of Mosul, close to the site of a controversial Turkish military deployment, a commander said.
"Our forces began an attack on the Daesh gunmen remaining in the centre of the Bashiqa (area) this morning at 6:00 am," said Major General Bahram Yassin, a commander of the Kurdish peshmerga forces in the area, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.
"We have been besieging them in the centre of the town for more than two weeks," Yassin said.
The assaulting Kurdish forces attacked from the north, east and south of Bashiqa, which is located east of Mosul, IS's last major urban stronghold in Iraq that the country's forces are battling to retake.
Turkey has forces deployed in the Bashiqa area, an issue that has caused major friction between Ankara and Baghdad.
Ankara has insisted on playing a role in operation to retake Mosul, which was launched on October 17, and has carried out artillery strikes against IS from the Bashiqa area.
The government of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region has close ties to Ankara, but relations between Turkey and the federal government in Baghdad have grown steadily more tense over the troops issue.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has repeatedly demanded that Turkey remove the forces, while top Turkish officials have flatly refused to do so and made a series of dismissive statements about the Iraqi premier.
IS overran Mosul and swathes of other territory north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces have since regained much of that ground from the jihadists.
