Iraq says controls half of Daesh-held Nineveh province

BAGHDAD

Iraqi forces have captured half of the northern Nineveh province from Daesh, the Iraqi army said Saturday.

“Our forces have managed to control half of Nineveh,” Brigadier General Yahia Rasoul, spokesman for the Joint Operations Command, told Anadolu Agency on Saturday.

Nineveh is Iraq’s second largest province.

Last month, the Iraqi army -- backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and local allies on the ground -- launched a major offensive to take Mosul, the provincial capital of Nineveh, from Daesh, which overran the city in 2014.

Rasoul said Iraqi forces now control most districts in eastern Mosul.

“Our military plan to liberate eastern Mosul is continuing,” he said. “We have also a plan for liberating eastern Mosul.”

Meanwhile, Ahmed Jomaa, a medic at the medical center in Kokjeli in east Mosul, said 16 bodies had been admitted into the hospital after they were killed by mortar fire by the Daesh terrorist group on eastern Mosul.

Once Iraq’s second largest city in terms of population, Mosul was overrun by Daesh -- along with large parts of the country’s northern and western regions -- in mid-2014.

*Reporting by Ali Jawad, Ibrahim Salih and Mohamed Walid; Writing by Mahmoud Barakat