LIVE BLOG: The battle for Mosul

Kurdish forces launched a major assault on Thursday on a town held by the Islamic State group near Mosul, opening a new front in the offensive to wrest back the militants' last Iraqi bastion.

You can read the latest story on Middle East Eye by clicking on the tweet below.

The battle for Mosul could create the year's worst single humanitarian crisis, according to the UN's humanitarian coordinator in Iraq. That statement must be taken in context with Aleppo, where 250,000 people are trapped and hundreds are dying in Syrian government bombardment, and even Hurricane Matthew, which devastated large parts of the Pacific, killed hundreds and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.

You can read Middle East Eye's full article on the humanitarian situation in Mosul by clicking this link.

Something from the last US presidential debate: Republican candidate Donald Trump said last night that Iraqi forces launched the battle for Mosul to make his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton “look good”.

"The only reason they did it is because she’s running for the office of president and they want to look tough," he said. "They want to look good."

"She wanted to look good for the election," Trump added. "So they're going in."

Clinton said that Trump's comments "amazed" her.

"I'm just amazed that he seems to think that the Iraqi government and our allies and everybody else launched the attack on Mosul to help me in this election, but that’s how Donald thinks," she said. "You know, he always is looking for some conspiracy."

Trump also said Iran would be the "main beneficiary" of the liberation of Mosul.

I'll just leave this here... Trump's Mosul comments come in at 3m 40s.

The UN refugee agency has been quoted as saying a group of 900 people fled Mosul despite death threats from the Islamic State group. You can read Middle East Eye's story by clicking on the tweet below.

An interesting thought on the cost to IS of losing Mosul: experts have said the group makes $4m a month from tax revenues from the city. 

IS has already lost much of its oil wealth as its territory shrinks - estimates suggest it has lost most of the $1bn it pulled in in 2014 from oil sales.

In this article, Hisham al-Hashimi, an expert on IS who advises the Iraqi government, says the group makes $4m a month from Mosul by charging a 4 percent income tax on salaries less than $600 per month, and 5 percent on monthly salaries between $600 and $1,000 - all of which will also be lost if the city falls.

As a result, the group will move to more 'traditional' methods of getting its cash - donations, criminal activity etc.

Middle East Eye has previously reported British experts as saying IS finances were in freefall and the group was moving towards "gangster tactics" of extortion, looting and the like.

Almost 1,000 people have been treated for breathing problems linked to toxic gases from a sulfur plant that Islamic State militants are suspected to have set on fire near the city of Mosul, hospital sources said on Saturday.

No deaths were reported in connection with the incident, said the sources at the hospital in Qayyara, a town south of Mosul. The first cases began arriving on Friday morning, they said.

IS rounded up and killed 284 men and boys as Iraqi-led coalition forces closed in on Mosul, the group's last major stronghold in Iraq, an Iraqi intelligence source told CNN.

Those killed on Thursday and Friday were used as human shields against attacks forcing IS out of southern parts of Mosul, the source said.

The US Department of Defense has confirmed that an American military service member was killed by a bomb outside of Mosul during the large-scale anti-IS operation aimed to retake the country's second largest city.

Navy Chief Petty Officer Jason C. Finan, 34, of California was killed while working alongside a bomb detection unit as an advisor.

A Defense official said Finan died on Thursday when his vehicle hit an improvised explosive device. 

"The entire Navy expeditionary combat command family offers our deepest condolences and sympathies to the family and loved ones of the sailor we lost," said Rear Admiral Brian Brakke.

An air strike killed 15 women on Friday at a shrine near the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, local officials and medics said.

"Fifteen women were killed and another 50 wounded in a raid that targeted a Shiite place of worship at Dakuk," local official Amir Huda Karam told AFP, a toll confirmed by medical officials.

A spat has broken out between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Baghdad over the failure of the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, to invite a Kurdish delegation with him during a visit to a conference in Paris on Thursday.

The conference met to discuss the future of Mosul, which KRG forces are currently participating in the recapture.

"The Kurdistan Regional Government strongly denounces the Iraqi Foreign Minister for his improper and unilateral actions, with no regards to the sacrifices made by the Kurdistan Region.  Over the past two years, the Kurdistan Region has served as the strongest force to confront the expansion of the most dangerous terrorist organization, the Islamic Caliphate," said a statement released on the KRG website.

"The President of the Kurdistan Region and the Peshmerga forces are delivering major blows to the ISIS terrorists and liberating swaths of land, in an effort to protect our country, the dignity of our people, and the values of humanity.

"Therefore, we ask our partners in the international community to directly invite the Kurdistan Region, which is a major actor in fighting ISIS and hosting refugees, to international events on countering terrorism, the plight of refugees and Mosul's future.  Moreover, we ask the Iraqi Federal Government to refrain from repeating similar damaging actions that will only harm the interests of Iraq."

Islamic State group fighters may be preparing to use civilians as human shields, or simply kill them, rather than let them be liberated in an Iraqi offensive to retake Mosul, the UN said Friday. 

Elite Iraqi troops have been closing in on Mosul, the last IS bastion in Iraq, in a long-anticipated offensive. 

United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said his office had reports that civilians were being held close to IS fighter positions in Mosul, possibly as a buffer against advancing Iraqi forces.

"There is a grave danger that ISIL fighters will not only use such vulnerable people as human shields but may opt to kill them rather than see them liberated,” Zeid said in a statement, using another acronym for IS.

(Reuters)