HALABIYAH, Iraq -- Iraqi forces made significant progress as they closed in on the Islamic State-held town of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, the U.S.-led coalition and an Iraqi military spokesman said Monday.
U.S. Army Col. Ryan Dillon, a coalition spokesman, said that Iraqi forces have retaken about 95 square miles from the extremist group since the operation began early Sunday, though they have not yet pushed into the town itself.
"As we get into the urban areas -- as we saw in Mosul and Raqqa -- that's where we'll see the pace slow down, that's where [the militants] have placed their defenses," he said.
Dozens of civilians have fled the area. Sadia Sajet from Tal Afar said she walked for over a day to cross the front line and reach Iraqi forces.
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"We stayed overnight by the river. There were a lot of dead bodies there. The smell was horrible," she said. "We slept there and then started walking again at four in the morning. And we walked until we arrived here."
Sajet said two other women fleeing with her died of exhaustion while attempting to make the journey.
The spokesman for the Joint Military Command, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, said troops recaptured six villages located a few kilometers from the urban areas of Tal Afar. He said militants deployed suicide car bombers, roadside bombs and mortars to slow down the advancing troops.
Citing intelligence, Rasool estimated there were about 2,000 Islamic State militants inside the town.
U.S.-backed Iraqi forces drove Islamic State militants from Mosul last month after a grueling, nine-month campaign to retake the country's second largest city. U.S.-allied forces are currently battling militants in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the extremists' unofficial capital.
Dillon said most of the territory retaken in the operation has been in the Kisik junction area to the east of the town.
Tal Afar, about 95 miles east of the Syrian border, is in one of the last pockets of Islamic State-held territory in Iraq.
Some 49,000 people have fled the Tal Afar district since April, according to the United Nations, sparking concern that the displaced will exacerbate the humanitarian crisis that caused by the Mosul operation. Nearly a million people remain displaced by the campaign to retake Mosul.
Information for this article was contributed by Sinan Salaheddin of The Associated Press.
A Section on 08/22/2017