By Babak Dehghanpisheh and Ahmed Rasheed EAST OF MOSUL/BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi government forces launched a U.S.-backed offensive on Monday to drive Islamic State from the northern city of Mosul, a high-stakes battle to retake the militants' last major stronghold in the country. Two years after the jihadists seized the city of 1.5 million people and declared a caliphate from there encompassing tracts of Iraq and Syria, a force of some 30,000 Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Sunni tribal fighters began to advance. A U.S.-led air campaign has helped push Islamic State from much of the territory it held but 4,000 to 8,000 fighters are thought to remain in Mosul.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iraq-announces-start-offensive-retake-mosul-001808288.html

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