Dushanbe, 13.06.2016. /NIAT “Khovar”/. Iraqi security forces successfully carried out an operation to free villages from Islamic State (IS) militants in the south of the IS-held city of Mosul, Xinhua news agency reports quoting military statement.

Iraq’s army along with Kurdish security forces, known as the Peshmerga, supported by the U.S.-led coalition air fleet, attacked IS posts at a village cluster scattered in the east of the militant-seized town of Qayyara, 50 km south of Mosul, the capital of Iraq’s northern province of Nineveh, said the Operations Command of Nineveh Liberation’s media office in a statement.

Clashes in Kharaib Jabur village killed at least 25 IS militants and destroyed four of their vehicles, the statement added.

Sunday’s operation is the first phase of a major offensive launched in late March, where troops managed to reach several villages scattered in the south and east of Mosul.

The latest operation aimed to free the town of Qayyara in order to be able to surround Mosul from both the south and east, before heading towards Mosul in order to flush out IS militants from the city, which lies 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.