Shia militias open up new front in Mosul as Iraqi army fends off Isis counterattack on Ramadi

New operation launched on Saturday to cut off Isis’s escape route to Syria marks first major entry by Iran-backed fighters in the almost two-week-old campaign

Pro-government Iraqi forces with a Shiite religious flag outside the village of al-Khuwayn, south of Mosul, last Sunday (Getty)

Forces from an Iranian-backed Shia paramilitary umbrella organisation have begun a major new stage in the offensive to recapture the Iraqi city of Mosul from Isis, as the group puts up a fierce fight in the struggle for control of the city.

A 28,000-strong coalition of Iraqi army, Kurdish Peshmerga, Sunni fighters and Shia militias have managed to make significant gains on the north, south and eastern approaches to the city during the past 12 days of fighting, despite Isis counterattacks on other Iraqi cities and the difficulties posed by landmines, sniper fire and suicide bombers.

The town of Tal Afar, to the west of Mosul, is the last front to see ground force deployment in the form of the Hashed al-Shaabi, a paramilitary umbrella group largely composed of Iranian-funded militias.

“The operation aims to cut supplies between Mosul and Raqqa and tighten the siege of [Isis] in Mosul and liberate Tal Afar,” Hashed spokesperson Ahmed al-Assadi said on Saturday, referring to Isis's main strongholds in Iraq and Syria.

The often competing interests of the different US-backed forces battling to remove Isis from Mosul has made the operation a complex one: Iraqi Kurds and Sunni Arab politicians, as well as Turkey, have raised concerns over the possibility of further violence if Shia militias enter the majority Sunni city, seized by Isis in 2014.

Amnesty International has accused Shia militas of mounting revenge attacks on Sunni civilians suspected of supporting Isis in the last two years, including torture and extrajudicial executions.

Hashed’s commanders have said that they do not plan to enter the city limits when fighting eventually reaches the outskirts of the city.

Elsewhere in Iraq on Saturday, Iraqi army officials said that the security forces managed to repel an attack on the western city of Ramadi overnight.

Eleven militants were arrested, Captain Ahmed al-Dulaimi of Anbar province police force said, who confessed to planning an assault from a southern suburb.

Isis has launched several counterattacks on cities in Iraq in an attempt to draw focus and attention away from the coalition’s battle for Mosul. Fierce fighting in the Kurdish city of Kirkuk in the east lasted three days, and killed up to 90 people.

More diversionary attacks are expected as Isis members infiltrate urban centres in sleeper cells by pretending to be some of the expected hundreds of thousands of people who will be displaced by fighting, several Iraq officials have said.

While the loss of Mosul will effectively spell Isis’s defeat in Iraq, suicide bombs and other attacks on civilians designed to show the group is still capable of inflicting death and destruction are likely, analysts warn, as Isis evolves from a land-holding force to a potentially global ideological insurgency.