LATEST: Britain Confirms Surveillance Missions, Could “Last For Months”

MONDAY FEATURE

Women Doctors in Mosul On Strike Over Intimidation by Islamic State

UPDATE 1430 GMT: Reporters in the area say fighting continues for control of the Mosul Dam complex.

Kate Benyon-Tinker of the BBC:

Bill Neely of NBC observes clashes even as the Islamic State pulls back from some positions:

Smoke billows from three positions around the dam itself. A village 10 miles from it, is shrouded in smoke. New explosions every few minutes.

We watched Kurdish fighters fire rockets at Isis targets six miles from them….

After Kurdish fighters fired four rockets, ISIS fired back three shells landing 80 yards from where we were. ISIS targeted firing point in minutes

US warplanes overhead during most of this battle. It’s clearly taking place across a front of at least 30 miles. Isis clearly being pushed.

I saw many ISIS vehicles destroyed. One with the black ISIS emblem on side. Another in pieces; clearly hit by airstrike.

An ISIS checkpoint had been hit from the air- a building flattened, a vehicle destroyed. ISIS have taken a pounding in the dam area.

UPDATE 0915 GMT: The Kurdish website Rudaw has pulled back the claim that Kurdish peshmerga have fully liberated the Mosul Dam complex.

Iraqi State TV had echoed the assertion of Kurdish politicians that the Dam had been retaken from the Islamic State. However, witnesses indicate that the peshmerga are having to negotiate roads to the complex that have been bobby-trapped with explosive devices.

A reporter for Britain’s ITV reports Kurdish reinforcement maneuvering to get to the Dam:

Supporters of the Islamic State are saying on Twitter that the complex is still in the hands of the jihadists.

Kurdish forces, backed by US airstrikes, have retaken Mosul Dam in northern Iraq from the Islamic State.

The operation is the most significant counter-offensive since the jihadists seized a series of towns in northwest Iraq, as Kurdish peshmerga withdrew, and advanced within 30 miles of the Iraqi Kurdistan capital Erbil earlier this month. The Dam, the largest in Iraq, was captured on August 7.

The rapid advance, which led to a high-profile humanitarian crisis as 10,000s of Iraqi refugees were stranded on a mountainside, spurred the first US airstrikes on the Islamic State.

On Sunday, the Kurdish military said it had moved into 80% of the Dam complex, Iraq’s largest, and this morning Ali Awni of the Kurdish Democratic Party said, “Mosul Dam was liberated completely.” Another party official and a Kurdish security officer confirmed the news.

US warplanes carried out nine airstrikes and 14 on Sunday, most of them near the Dam. Central Command claimed Sunday’s strikes destroyed 10 armed vehicles, seven Humvees, two armoured personnel carriers, and one checkpoint.

Footage from an attack on an Islamic State armed vehicle on Saturday:

Britain Confirms Surveillance Missions, Could “Last For Months”

Britain has confirmed its surveillance flights in support of the attacks against the Islamic State and said they could last for months.

Defense Secretary Michael Fallon confirmed the deployment and said — paralleling a Sunday statement from the White House — that the mission has changed from ending a humanitarian crisis among Iraq’s Yazidi refugees to joining the “fight against terrorism” and supporting the new Iraqi Government.

Fallon also confirmed the open secret that British regular troops — special forces of the SAS have already been deployed on the ground, and that Britain is flying ammunition and arms including machine guns from former Soviet-bloc countries to Kurdish forces.