The village of Topzawa is located 8 km northeast of Mosul and is close to the village of Bashiqa which was taken by Kurdish fighters on Sunday (October 23). "We are now between the villages of Teiss Kharab and Topzawa, which is located eight kilometres northeast of Mosul; Reuters reported.

Over the past two days we were able to liberate Teiss Kharab, Der Halab, Kharab Dalel, Bashiqa, Bahzar, Fadilia, Qanona, Omar Qamshi, Achichok," said Brigadier Nouredin Hussein, head of the Bashiqa region operation, told reporters amid the sound of explosions.

Mosul, Iraq's second biggest city, is where Daesh (ISIS/ISIL/IS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his Sunni caliphate in 2014, after his alliance between millenarian Islamists and veteran officers from the disbanded army of Saddam Hussein roared back into Iraq from bases they set up in the mayhem of Syria's war. Five Iraqi army divisions melted away before terrorists numbered in hundreds. The battle to retake Mosul pits an unwieldy coalition of a 30,000-strong Iraqi regular force backed by the US and Europeans, alongside Kurdish and Shi'ite militias, against terrorists who have exploited the Sunni community's sense of dispossession in Iraq and betrayal in Syria.

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