MOSUL, Iraq -- The Iraqi army said Sunday that troops have driven Islamic State militants out of the town of Nimrud, south of Mosul, near the site of famed ancient Assyrian ruins that were reportedly destroyed by the extremists.
Iraq's special forces, meanwhile, battled militants in the city of Mosul, where they struggled to advance against waves of suicide car bombs.
Troops are converging from several fronts on Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city and the biggest urban area under control of the Islamic State extremist group, as part of an offensive launched last month. The special forces have advanced the farthest so far, and hold a handful of districts on the city's eastern edge.
In Mosul, the special forces say they have cleared the Qadisiya and Zahra neighborhoods, and are planning to advance farther in the coming hours. Over the past week they have inched forward, trying to avoid casualties among their troops and civilians as suicide bombers in armor-plated vehicles rush forward from hiding spots among densely populated areas.
"The only weapons they have left are car bombs and explosives," said Iraqi special forces Maj. Gen. Sami al-Aridi as he radioed with commanders in the field. "There are so many civilian cars and any one of them could be a bomb," he said.
Troops were building berms and roadblocks to prevent car bombs from breaching the front lines. Since last week's quick advance into Mosul proper, they have struggled to hold territory under heavy Islamic State counterattacks.
Several suicide car bombers attacked the advancing special forces on Saturday, wounding around a dozen troops, three civilians, and killing a child, officers said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to brief reporters.
The Iraqi armed forces do not release official casualty figures, but field medics have noted dozens of killed and wounded since the operation to liberate the city began on Oct. 17.
Civilians are paying a heavy toll in the battle for Mosul, with nearly 50,000 forced from their homes, most living in displaced persons camps. The Norwegian Refugee Council said Sunday that conditions were worsening for noncombatants, especially over the past week.
"Civilians have told us of horrific stories from inside Mosul," said Wolfgang Gressmann, the group's Iraq director. "They have given terrifying accounts of [the Islamic State] moving them from neighborhood to neighborhood, and from house to house, in tactics identical with being used as human shields."
The commander of the Mosul operation said troops took Nimrud, some 19 miles south of Mosul, after heavy fighting. It was unclear whether they had liberated the nearby archaeological site that dates to the 13th century B.C.
"The 9th division of the Iraqi army has liberated the town of Nimrud completely and raised the Iraqi flag over its buildings after the enemy suffered heavy casualties," Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Raheed Yar Allah said in a statement.
The late 1980s discovery of treasures in Nimrud's royal tombs was one of the 20th century's most significant archaeological finds. The Iraqi government said militants, who captured the site in June 2014, destroyed it the next year using heavy military vehicles.
The Assyrian ruins were not the only significant site devastated by the Islamic State. Christians returned Sunday to their parish in Keramlis, an ancient Assyrian town on the Nineveh plains in northern Iraq, to find everything destroyed.
Islamic State militants had decapitated the statue of the Virgin Mary before they left. A confessional had been turned into a closet, a tomb had been desecrated, and red prayer benches were burned.
Keramlis fell to the Islamic State in August 2014, two months after the extremist group took Mosul. The town was retaken by Iraqi forces three weeks ago, but most of its homes were destroyed in the process.
Some who returned Sunday went to attend a prayer service in their hometown and to check on their homes.
Emotions ran high when the church bell tolled for the first time in more than two years, but standing amid the ruins of their church, few could summon hope for the future.
"It was amazing, I got goose bumps. The bell for us means a great deal," said Sahir Shamoun, an athletics teacher who drove four hours with his wife from Zakho, near the Turkish border, to check on their home Sunday.
Shamoun and his wife found their home largely standing, amid a vista of almost completely destroyed houses; but all their electronics and furniture had been stolen.
"I feel great sadness," he said. "I'm not sure when or if I'll be back. I think of my children, will they have a future here?"
Christians once constituted a sizable minority in Iraq, but their numbers have dwindled since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion as many have emigrated to the West to escape violence.
Shamoun himself said he has been displaced five times, and that he now believes there is no future for Christians or other minority groups in the Middle East.
"You put the cornerstone for your home, but still you know it's not yours," he said. "But we are stubborn people, we will keep building."
Meanwhile, a leading U.S.-based rights group released a report alleging that security forces of Iraq's regional Kurdish government had routinely destroyed Arab homes and even some whole villages in areas retaken from the Islamic State group over the past two years.
The Human Rights Watch report said that between September 2014 and May 2016, Kurdish forces advancing against the Islamic State destroyed Arab homes in disputed areas of Kirkuk and Nineveh provinces, while Kurdish homes were left intact. It says the demolitions took place in disputed areas in northern Iraq which the Kurds want to incorporate into their autonomous region over the objections of the central government.
Sunni Arab politicians have previously accused the Kurds of seeking to recast the demographics of mixed areas in northern Iraq. The struggle is particularly intense in the oil-rich Kirkuk region.
"In village after village in Kirkuk and Nineveh, [Kurdish Regional Government] security forces destroyed Arab homes -- but not those belonging to Kurds -- for no legitimate military purpose," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "[Kurdish Regional Government] leaders' political goals don't justify demolishing homes illegally."
All sides fighting in the battle for Mosul have been accused of human-rights abuses, though the worst allegations focus on the Islamic State.
Information for this article was contributed by Susannah George, Sinan Salaheddin, Zeina Karam, Brian Rohan and Fay Abuelgasim of The Associated Press.
A Section on 11/14/2016