Khamis Khanjar, a businessman who has privately sponsored a Sunni Turkmen militia unit called the Nineveh Guards Force, warns that Iraq is on the precipice of a new round of sectarian bloodshed should Shi’ite militiamen take further part in the Mosul operations. The militias are currently surrounding the city of Tal Afar near Mosul and want to attack it and Mosul itself. The Shi’ites are accused of war crimes in Sunni areas they liberated further south.
Militants accused shopkeepers in Mosul of price gouging before arresting them and taking them to an unknown destination. Meanwhile, civilians are quarreling over aid packages in liberated sections of the city.
Special forces are in control of Amin, Masarif, and Qahira. Regular army freed Egiedat and Gaser, while the militias captured Salam, Tal Mfeilka and Turkomaniya. The region called the Nineveh Plains was also cleared.
The estimated number of Kurdish fighters killed in the 2-year-old war against the Islamic State militancy stands at around 1,600 dead. Another 9,500 have been wounded.
An estimate offered by Khalaf al-Hadidi, who is a Nineveh provincial council member, places the number of civilian dead in the Mosul Theater at 550 killed.
At least 49 were killed and 36 were wounded:
Militants attacked a security checkpoint in Samarra killing eight policemen and wounding another seven. At least three of the militants died in the attack.
In Baghdad, a bomb killed three people and wounded eight more.
Mortar fire killed two policemen and wounded 11 civilians in Shirqat. In Zhouzhila, an old landmine left over from the Iran-Iraq War killed a Peshmerga officer and wounded a civilian.
Gunfire near a Mandaean temple in Kirkuk killed one person and wounded another.
Near Hawija, a roadside bomb wounded seven people. Two were children, and the rest were women.
Militants executed a mukhtar in Zab.
A Peshmerga fighter was wounded by a sniper in Atshana.
In Mosul, an airstrike killed eight French militants trying to escape the city. Ten militants were killed trying to infiltrate an area under Iraqi control.
A strike on Badush killed at least a dozen terrorists.
