U.S. Jets, Daesh Massacre People in Kirkuk
KIRKUK (Dispatches) – A U.S. airstrike killed 15 women on Friday at a shrine near the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, local officials and medics said.
"Fifteen women were killed and another 50 wounded in a raid that targeted a place of worship at Dakuk," local council chief Amir Huda Karam told AFP.
The toll from the afternoon raid was confirmed by Dr Abbas Mustafa Dakuki at the local hospital, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Kirkuk.
The killing came after militants of the Daesh group attacked Kirkuk in an apparent effort to divert thousands of troops and militiamen closing in on their stronghold in Mosul, Iraq’s second city.
The assault on Kirkuk, which lies in an oil-producing region, killed 18 members of the security forces and workers at a power station outside the city, including three Iranians.
Iraqi government forces captured eight villages south and southeast of Mosul. Militia forces attacking from the north and east also captured several villages, according to statements from their respective military commands overnight.
The offensive that started on Monday to capture Mosul is expected to become the biggest battle fought in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
The United Nations says Mosul could require the biggest humanitarian relief operation in the world, with worst-case scenario forecasts of up to a million people being uprooted.
About 1.5 million residents are still believed to be inside Mosul. Daesh has taken 550 families from villages around Mosul and is holding them close to its locations in the city, probably as human shields, a spokeswoman for the UN human rights office said in Geneva.
Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, addressing a meeting in Paris via video link, said the offensive was advancing more quickly than planned.
Once inside Mosul, Iraqi special forces would have to go from street to street and from neighborhood to neighborhood to clear explosives and booby traps, the official said.
In Kirkuk, Daesh attacked several police buildings and a power station in the early hours of Friday and some of the attackers remained holed up in a mosque and an abandoned hotel.
The militants also cut the road between the city and the power station 30 km (20 miles) to the north.
 The assailants in Kirkuk came from outside the city, said the head of Iraq's Special Forces, Lieutenant General Talib Shaghati, speaking on a frontline east of Mosul. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi reacted to the killing of the Iranian citizens in Kirkuk, saying these attacks are "the last breath of terrorists in Iraq."
Iraq’s top Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, on Friday renewed a call to spare civilians.
"All those who are participating in the battle have to respect the humanitarian principles and refrain from seeking vengeance," said a sermon delivered in Sistani's name in the holy city of Karbala by one of his representatives.