Drone kills 3 IS militants, senior executioner among 90 killed Sunday

Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) Three Islamic State militants were killed on Tuesday when a drone bombed their pickup vehicle west of Mosul, according to a local source.

Shafaaq News quoted the source saying that the vehicle was passing through al-Najjar district. The trio boarding the car was killed.

Iraqi government forces launched a major campaign Sunday to retake western Mosul from IS militants, having recaptured the eastern side late January. The city, IS’s biggest bastion in Iraq, fell in the group’s grip in 2014 when it proclaimed an “Islamic Caliphate”.

Iraqi forces and IS have exchanged drone attacks over the past few weeks across the Tigris River which bisects Mosul.

Also on Tuesday, Thamer Ismail, commander of the Rapid Response Forces, was quoted by Alghad Press saying that 90 IS fighters died in Monday operations at Bousaif hills, an area near the strategic Mosul Airport.

Meanwhile, Zoheir al-Jubouri, a spokesperson of the Nineveh Guards militia, a Sunni volunteer paramilitary fighting Islamic State, said Monday that security operations had killed Mekhled al-Geheishi, a senior executioner at the Badush prison in western Mosul.

He also quoted residents in Mosul saying that Islamic State militants had executed seven members of one family after overhearing them speaking via a cell phone inside their residence in al-Tanak district. Those executed included a six-year-old kid, according to Jubouri.