MOSUL, Iraq -- Iraq's special forces worked Sunday to clear neighborhoods on the eastern edge of Islamic State-held Mosul as bombings launched by the extremist group elsewhere in the country killed at least 20 people.
The Mosul offensive has slowed in recent days as Iraqi forces have pushed into more densely populated areas, where they cannot rely as much on airstrikes and shelling because of the risk posed to civilians, who have been told to stay in their homes.
"There are a lot of civilians and we are trying to protect them," said Lt. Col. Muhanad al-Timimi. "This is one of the hardest battles that we've faced till now."
Some civilians are fleeing the combat zone, while Islamic State militants are holding others back for use as human shields, making it harder for Iraqi commanders on the ground to get approval for requested U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. Iraq's special forces are some of the country's best troops, but they still largely rely on air support to clear terrain.
Iraqi forces first entered the eastern edge of the city Tuesday. On Friday, forces began pushing into Mosul proper, but so far have advanced just over a mile into the city.
Still, the White House envoy to the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition, Brett McGurk, told reporters in Jordan on Sunday that the offensive is "ahead of schedule."
Iraqi forces stand to receive a boost with Sunday's launch of an offensive against the Islamic State-held city of Raqqa in northern Syria, the self-declared capital of the extremist group's self-styled caliphate. That operation, launched by U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian forces, could force the extremists to split their forces to defend the two largest cities still under their control.
On the southern front of the Mosul battle, Iraqi forces are still some 12 miles from the city center. The fighting was centered on the town of Hamam al-Alil, where Associated Press journalists could hear gunfire and saw attack helicopters firing on Islamic State positions.
Kurdish peshmerga fighters launched mortar rounds and fired heavy artillery at the Islamic State-held town of Bashiqa, about 8 miles northeast of Mosul. The town, which is believed to be largely empty except for Islamic State militants, has been encircled by Kurdish forces.
The extremists captured Mosul and surrounding areas in 2014, and have had plenty of time to dig trenches, block roads and mine approaches to the city.
"Daesh dug trenches that they filled with water, and they have a lot of suicide attackers and car bombs," said al-Timimi, using the Arabic acronym for the militant group.
Bombs target Iraqi cities
The extremists, meanwhile, struck far from the front lines with a series of bombings.
The deadliest attack took place in the city of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, which is home to a major Shiite shrine. Provincial spokesman Ali al-Hamdani said the attacker set off a bomb-packed ambulance in a parking lot near Shiite pilgrims before detonating his explosives vest.
The attack killed 11 people, including at least four Iranians, and wounded up to 100 other people.
Another suicide attacker rammed an explosives-laden car into a busy checkpoint outside the city of Tikrit, killing at least nine people. Al-Hamdani said five female students, a woman and three policemen were killed in that attack, while 25 others were wounded.
The Islamic State had also captured Tikrit during its lightning blitz across Iraq in the summer of 2014. Iraqi forces drove the militants from the city, around 80 miles north of Baghdad, in April 2015.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bahram Ghasemi, condemned the two attacks, which he said had killed 21 people, including 10 Iranian pilgrims, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the conflicting tolls, which are common in the chaotic aftermath of attacks.
In an online statement, the Islamic State claimed all three bombings and said the ambulance bomb was set off by a second suicide attacker. The AP could not verify the authenticity of the statement, which was posted on a militant website commonly used by the extremists.
30,000 flee fighting
The Hassan Sham camp, about 20 miles east of Mosul, opened Friday to help handle the exodus of civilians after government troops battled their way into the city last week.
More than 8,000 people had fled by Saturday, bringing the total number displaced since the offensive began to about 30,000, according to United Nations estimates.
They arrived in dump trucks and on foot, carrying their belongings in large bags, wrapped in bedding and tarps.
Relatives were waiting outside the camp's chain-link fence.
Waeed Ahmed Hussein had not seen his parents and four brothers in almost three years, since the extremists seized the Iraqi city and their nearby village of Gogjali, and he fled.
When Hussein, 32, spotted his father in the camp's screening area, he rushed over to kiss the elderly man's hands through the fence.
"Uncle, uncle!" cried his 6-year-old nephew, Idris, sprinting out of the gate to hug him.
Humanitarian groups had warned before the offensive began nearly three weeks ago that as many as a million people could be displaced, and that camps were unprepared because of lack of funding.
In addition to Hassan Sham, the U.N. refugee agency is building 10 more camps, but only half are ready to receive people.
Hassan Sham now houses about 4,000 people and can accommodate 7,000 more. But with the volume of families streaming in, officials expect they will soon have to build another camp nearby.
More than 200 families arrived Saturday and more than 600 on Friday, said Sadiq Mohammed, deputy camp manager. The Khazir camp up the road was already full of those displaced from eastern villages.
For civilians caught in the fighting, the route to safety is a perilous one.
Hussein's older brother, Saad Ahmed Hussein, said that when the family fled their village east of Mosul on Saturday morning, they were targeted by Islamic State snipers and mortar fire.
Iraqi forces had freed the village, but militants sneaked back in using tunnels near the graveyard, he said.
He tried to persuade his eldest brother to leave with the rest of the family, but he has several small children, including a toddler. "He said, 'I prefer to die here,'" Saad Ahmed Hussein said.
New arrivals at the camp complained about a lack of food, water, bedding and latrines. They worried about tents filling up, and where their children would go to school.
But many of the children seemed oblivious to their parents' struggles, exploring the tents, playing ball with stones and hide-and-seek in the latrines.
As Idris said, "It's better than dying."
Information for this article was contributed by Susannah George, Sinan Salaheddin, Murtada Faraj, Cristiana Mesquita, Balint Szlanko, Maamoun Youssef and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the Los Angeles Times.
A Section on 11/07/2016