Iraqi forces reach Mosul city limits as campaign enters third week

Iraqi troops neared the city limits of Mosul on Monday, as the campaign to dislodge the Islamic State (IS) from its stronghold entered its third week.

The country's elite Counter-Terrorism Service gave contradictory statements on an advance into the city's Karama district. 

"They have entered Mosul," Wissam Araji, a CTS general, told the Reuters news agency. "They are fighting now in Karama."

The CTS will pause its advance in Karama until the forces on the other fronts advance "to protect their back", Araji said in Bazwaia, a village at the edge of the city's eastern suburb.

However, AFP quoted a CTS staff lieutenant general, Abdelwahab al-Saadi, as saying that his men were still outside the district. They were, however, only "several hundred yards" from their goal, he said.

The counter-terrorism unit resumed the offensive on the eastern front on Monday.

It had also paused last week after it made gains quicker than forces on other fronts, to allow them to close the gap.

Iraqi security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters started the offensive on 17 October, with air and ground support from the US-led coalition.

Iraqi Shia militias joined the fighting on Saturday, aiming to cut the route between Mosul and Raqqa, IS's main stronghold in Syria.

The battle for Mosul, still home to hundreds of thousands of people, is shaping up to be one of the toughest in more than a decade of turmoil since the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

IS has executed hundreds of people for disloyalty or trying to flee Mosul since the offensive started, according to sources inside the city and the United Nations.

The group is said to be using thousands of people as human shields in an attempt to stall the advance.