“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.

Syrian women freed from Isis, following the example of female Kurdish fighters, are taking up arms in order to help in the next fight. Female residents originally from al-Bab in northern Syria who were living in nearby Manbij when it was liberated have been so inspired by the fighting of the female soldiers in the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) that they have created their own all-female battalion ahead of the battle for their city.

Shaho is 29, a government employee. He hunches over some tea, chain-smoking throughout our three hours together. He is this group's founder, and his natural confidence makes him something of a spokesman, too. Several years ago, stuck between the marauding jihadism of IS and the incompetency of the Iraqi government, he set up this symposium, and named it "Logic". The group is an intellectual refuge for Iraq's atheists and secularists, a people denied any official existence by the country's government, and holders of a death sentence courtesy of the Islamic State group.

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.

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.

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.”

An Iraqi-born man who entered the United States as a refugee pleaded guilty on Monday in Texas to attempting to volunteer to fight with Islamic State, federal prosecutors said. Omar Faraj Saeed Al-Hardan, 24, pleaded guilty in a federal court in Houston to one count of attempting to provide material support, specifically himself, to the militant group, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the southern district of Texas said in a statement. Al-Hardan, who most recently lived in Houston, faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced on Jan. 17, prosecutors said.

A Swedish city is considering giving jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq free housing, a driver’s license, and tax benefits to ease their reintegration, but social media users have slammed the proposal, saying it ignores the terrorists’ victims. The support for extremists was proposed by Anna Sjöstrand, a municipal coordinator against violent extremism in the city of Lund in southern Sweden. “There may be criticism, but [I think] that you should get the same help as others who seek help from us.

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.

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.

So-called Islamic State confirms the death last month of one of its most senior leaders, information minister Abu Mohammed al-Furqan.

Sweden is often regarded as a model European state, but it has become one of the continent's biggest exporters of jihadists, per head of population.

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.

A Syrian man who told French authorities he was planning a suicide attack in Düsseldorf has been extradited to Germany. Saleh A. turned himself in on February 1 in Paris, and implicated three other suspects.