An Iraqi army elite unit and Kurdish fighters on Thursday launched a fresh offensive to dislodge Islamic State militants from villages around Mosul, their last major city stronghold in Iraq, with the air and ground support of the U.S.-led coalition. A cloud of black smoke wreathed some frontline villages, probably caused by oil fires, a tactic the militants use to escape air surveillance. On the northern front, Kurdish Peshmerga shot down with machine guns an unmanned drone aircraft that came from the Islamic State lines in the village of Nawaran a few kilometres away. "There have been times when they dropped explosives," said Halgurd Hasan, one of the Kurdish fighters deployed in a position overlooking the plain north of Mosul. Ali Awni, a Kurdish officer, kept a handheld radio receiver open on a frequency used by Islamic State.

Source: Egypt Independent October 20, 2016 05:37 UTC