Two former child soldiers have threatened legal action against the private security company Aegis Defence Services over psychological harm they say they suffered when the company recruited them as adults to work as mercenaries in Iraq. The men were recruited as child soldiers in Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war, which ended in 2002, their solicitor Rebekah Read of Leigh Day has told the Guardian. Years later, as adults, they were hired to work as security guards for Aegis in Iraq, she said.

“They’re everywhere,” said the Iraqi intelligence officer, sweeping his arm from this ancient Christian village toward the horizon. The Iraqi captain was searching for tunnels dug by Islamic State fighters. The officer stomped on the ground. “Here. We found one, then three, now six. Right here.” And over there? “More,” he said. “And more.” Villages recaptured from ISIS over the past three weeks by the Kurdish peshmerga and Iraqi army forces on the road to Mosul have been honeycombed with tunnels, many of them booby-trapped.

A mass grave containing about 100 decapitated bodies has been found south of Mosul, Iraq's military said in a statement Monday. The mass grave was discovered by Iraqi forces in the School of Agriculture on the outskirts of Hammam al-Alil, a town recaptured from the Islamic State on Monday, Iraq's Joint Military Command said, according to CNN. "Gangs of ISIS militants continue to commit crimes against our people," the statement said, CNN reported.

Through the haze and smoke, the brown and gray outline of Gogjali is just about visible. It's an industrial suburb on the eastern outskirts of Mosul, just two kilometers (1.24 miles) from front line positions of the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Force (CTF), and it's their next target. The Iraqi units send mortar fire into the area every few minutes. In the distance they can see ISIS fighters moving between abandoned houses; witnesses inside Mosul say the terror group has moved vehicles into Gogjali; the assumption is they are packed with explosives and prepared to meet the advance of the Iraqi units.

Baghdad – Spokesman for Baghdad Operations Command, Colonel Saad Moen, introduced suicide bomber blew up himself close to al-Beiruti Café, in central Baghdad, and identified that the assault left various casualties. Moen mentioned in a press assertion, “A suicide bomber blew up himself, yesterday, close to al-Beiruti Café, in central Baghdad, after the safety forces besieged him, ensuing within the harm of various individuals.” “Safety forces cordoned off the world of incident and barred approaching it, whereas transferred the wounded to a close-by hospital,” Moen added.

ISIS militants in the Iraqi city of Mosul have reportedly executed at least 232 people and forced thousands of others to relocate at gunpoint in order to transform them into human shields, the United Nation’s human rights office said on Friday. The apparent executions and forced movements suggest the jihadist group is turning to increasingly brutal measures as it attempts to defend Mosul from a large-scale military offensive launched on Oct. 17 meant to restore government control over the city, which was once Iraq’s second largest.

Iraqis are enduring dire conditions after fleeing the Mosul area, aid agencies say, as the army attempts to retake the city from IS.

Iraq’s parliament has passed a law forbidding the import, production or selling of alcoholic beverages in a surprise move that angered many in the country’s Christian community who rely on the business. The law, passed late on Saturday night, imposes a fine of up to 25m Iraqi dinars (£17,000) for anyone violating the ban. But it’s unclear how strictly the law would be enforced, and it could be struck down by the supreme court. Islam forbids the consumption of alcohol, but it has always been available in Iraq’s larger cities, mainly from shops run by Christians.

An air strike 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 Shiite 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 kilometres (30 miles) south of Kirkuk.

The United Nations said Friday it is "gravely worried" that ISIS has taken 550 families from villages around Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, and is using them as "human shields" as Iraqi and Kurdish forces battle the terror group for control of the city. Two hundred families from Samalia village and 350 families from Najafia were forced out Monday and taken to Mosul in what appears to be "an apparent policy by ISIS to prevent civilians escaping," Ravina Shamdasani, deputy spokeswoman for the UN Human Rights Office, told CNN.

Iraqi media outlets reported on Tuesday, that a large ISIS convoy was destroyed by an aerial bombing on the Iraqi-Syrian borders, and indicated that the convoy was carrying Arab and foreign members who were trying to escape from Mosul to the Syrian city of Raqqa. Al Sumaria News stated, “This evening, warplanes bombed a large convoy of 30 vehicles carrying Arab and foreign members of ISIS and their families, destructing the convoy and killing most of its occupants,” adding that, “The ISIS members and their families were trying to flee towards the Iraqi-Syrian borders.”

Iraq's military says it has inflicted "heavy losses of life and equipment" on ISIS in a district southeast of Mosul, as Iraqi-led forces close in on the city in the long-awaited battle to recapture it from the terror group. Hours after the beginning of the offensive, Iraq's military said it had inflicted losses and made advances in the Hamdaniya district, while Masoud Barzani, president of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, said "we have achieved a lot of success so far."

A long-awaited offensive to seize back Mosul after two years of Isis control has begun with columns of armour and military starting to move on the Northern Iraqi city. The start of the offensive, which has been months in the planning, was announced in an address on state television by Iraq’s prime minister in the early hours of Monday morning.

As Iraqi and coalition forces invade Mosul, the last ISIS stronghold in Iraq, the grim details of the extremist group’s rule come to light.

The U.S. military deployed to the east of Iraq’s Mosul has started shelling Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) targets as part of an operation to retake the city, a Peshmerga commander said on Oct. 15, state-run Anadolu Agency has reported. Peshmerga Commander Omer Huseyin told the agency that American howitzers, deployed some 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) away from Mosul city center, were hitting ISIL targets.

The U.S.-backed Iraqi offensive to try to force ISIS from Mosul may be just days away. Hundreds of thousands could be displaced in the fighting but the nearest camp can accommodate only 50,000 people.

The Russian RIA Novosti news agency reported on Wednesday that the United States made an agreement with Saudi Arabia to allow safe passage for ISIS militants to exit Mosul and retreat to Syrian territories before Iraqi government security forces start their liberation offensive. The Russian media outlet stated that the agreement will allow 9,000 ISIS fighters to be safely transferred to the eastern areas of Syria to launch an extensive offensive in order to capture the cities of Dier ez-Zour and Palmyra.

Iraqi forces are preparing for a battle expected to take place during the coming few days to liberate the city of Mosul from the grip of terrorist group of ISIS. Iraqi media outlets mentioned that around five thousand fighters belong to ISIS are controlling the city where 1.3 million citizens are besieged inside the city. News websites reported that 65 thousand Iraqi soldiers divided up into six divisions are expected to participate in the battle. In a related development, al-Hashd al-Shaabi Forces announced Monday the killing of 14 of its members after ISIS militants bombarded Camp Zilkan north of Mosul using five Katyusha rockets.

As Ashura, the day of Imam Hussain’s martyrdom (10th Muharram or October 12) nears, Shia groups in the city have launched a campaign to present the sacrifice made by Imam Hussain and his family members in Karbala (Iraq) as a fight against terrorism. They have put posters, banners and pamphlets carrying the slogan “Imam Hussain inspires humanity to fight terror.” It is an initiative of city-based Channel Win, an Islamic television channel.

The Pentagon gave a controversial UK PR firm over half a billion dollars to run a top secret propaganda program in Iraq, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal. Bell Pottinger’s output included short TV segments made in the style of Arabic news networks and fake insurgent videos which could be used to track the people who watched them, according to a former employee. The agency’s staff worked alongside high-ranking U.S. military officers in their Baghdad Camp Victory headquarters as the insurgency raged outside.