Iraqi, Syrian forces close in on Islamic State-held cities

BAGHDAD — A long-awaited military operation to recapture the northern city of Iraqi Mosul from Islamic State militants “has begun,” an Iraqi official said Thursday.

The spokesman for the Joint Military Command, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, said Iraqi forces retook several villages on the outskirts of the town of Makhmour, east of Mosul, on Thursday morning.

Rasool said the US-led international coalition is providing air support. He wouldn’t divulge more details.

It was not immediately clear how long such a complex and taxing operation could take. Mosul lies 360 kilometers, or 225 miles, northwest of Baghdad.

It’s Iraq’s second-largest city and it fell to Islamic State group during the militants’ June 2014 onslaught. Mosul is also the largest city in the Islamic State group’s self-declared caliphate.

In Syria, pro-government forces were poised to launch an assault to retake the Islamic State-held city of Palmyra, as Washington and Moscow meet Thursday to discuss fraught peace talks over the future of the country.

The IS group overran Palmyra, the Syrian city dubbed the “Pearl of the Desert” last May, and it has since blown up UNESCO-listed temples and looted relics dating back thousands of years.

Its recapture would be a strategic as well as symbolic victory for President Bashar al-Assad, since whoever controls it also controls the vast desert extending from central Syria to the Iraqi border, experts say.

Loyalists backed by Russian airstrikes were “800 meters (yards) from Palmyra” and now control areas linking it to Damascus and Syria’s third city Homs, a Syrian security source said Wednesday.

“The army is now at (the southern and southwestern) entrances to the city and is preparing to begin the battle to liberate Palmyra,” the source told AFP.

In an interview published Wednesday the commander of Russia’s forces in Syria admitted special forces on the ground were directing airstrikes on IS targets.

“I won’t conceal that there are also contingents of our special operations forces in Syria,” said Alexander Dvornikov, who serves as commander of Russian troops in Syria and recently received top military honors from President Vladimir Putin.

“They are carrying out additional reconnaissance of targets for Russian airstrikes, they direct aircraft to targets in far-flung areas and solve other special tasks,” he said in an interview to Rossiyskaya Gazeta state newspaper.

Russia’s Putin ordered a surprise withdrawal of the main part of Russia’s forces in Syria last week, and arrival of several warplanes back to Russia was a highly publicized affair, with pilots hailed as victorious heroes and broadcast live.

However, it was clear that many Russian officers will remain in Syria. Dvornikov said that the remaining contingent will have to ensure the enforcement of current ceasefire and security of its bases in Tartus and Hmeimim.

Meanwhile, there is some hope that high-level US-Russian meetings on Thursday could deliver the momentum needed to move the Geneva peace talks to a new round.

US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to gauge whether Moscow is ready to discuss ways to ease its ally Assad from power.

With the indirect negotiations in Geneva proving to be sluggish, all eyes are on Moscow since the two powers hold significant sway over the opposing sides in Syria’s devastating conflict.