Iraqis push toward Mosul

BARTELLA, Iraq -- Iraqi forces fought their way into two villages near Mosul on Monday as the offensive to retake the extremist-held city entered its second week and a rights group urged a probe into a suspected airstrike that hit a mosque, killing over a dozen civilians.

Iraqi special forces began shelling IS positions before dawn near Bartella, a historically Christian town to the east of Mosul they had retaken last week.

With patriotic music blaring from loudspeakers on their Humvees, they pushed into the village of Tob Zawa, about 5 1/2 miles from Mosul, amid heavy clashes.

After entering the village, they allowed more than 30 people who had been sheltering in a school to escape the fighting.

The Iraqi Federal Police, a military-style force, pushed into a small village in the Shura district south of Mosul, where they fired a large anti-aircraft gun and rocket-propelled grenades as they battled IS militants.

They later appeared to have secured the village, a cluster of squat homes on a desert plain, and handed out water and other aid to civilians.

The U.S.-led coalition said it had carried out six airstrikes Sunday near Mosul, destroying 19 fighting positions and 17 vehicles, as well as rocket and mortar launchers, artillery and tunnels.

Human Rights Watch meanwhile called for an investigation into last week's purported airstrike in northern Iraq that struck the women's section of a Shiite mosque in the town of Daquq.

The strike happened amid a large Islamic State assault on the nearby city of Kirkuk meant to distract the Iraqi forces and their allies from the operation around Mosul, the country's second-largest city.

The IS attack on Kirkuk, about 100 miles southeast of Mosul, lasted for two days and killed at least 80 people, mainly members of the Kurdish security forces, who assumed control of the city in 2014 as Iraqi forces crumbled before an IS advance.

Human Rights Watch said Daquq's residents believe Friday's attack was an airstrike because of the extent of the destruction and because planes could be heard flying overhead.

The New York-based watchdog said at least 13 people were reported killed.

The U.S.-led coalition and the Iraqi military, which are waging the offensive to drive IS from Mosul, are the only parties known to be flying military aircraft over Iraq.

Col. John Dorrian, a U.S. military spokesman, said the coalition had "definitively determined" it did not conduct the airstrike that killed civilians in Daquq and had shared its findings with the Iraqi government, which is carrying out its own investigation.

"The Coalition uses precision munitions and an exhaustive process to reduce the possibility of civilian casualties and collateral damage because the preservation of civilian life is (of) paramount importance to us," Dorrian said.

Iraqi Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, spokesman for the Joint Military Command, confirmed the Iraqi government was investigating the attack. He declined to say whether Iraqi or coalition planes were flying in the area at the time of the explosion.

As in Kirkuk, IS launched an attack on the western Iraqi town of Rutba, hundreds of miles away from Mosul, on Sunday.