Mosul offensive

U.N. chief Antonio Guterres called on March 30 for protection of civilians to be the "absolute priority" as he visited Iraq, where hundreds of thousands are caught up in the battle for Mosul.

The US military said on Wednesday that 284 members of the Iraqi security forces had been killed since the battle to retake western Mosul began, with more than 1,600 wounded.

Three jailed militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) attempted to overturn the constitutional order and establish a caliphate in Turkey by staging attacks with "serious weapons," according to a decision by a court regarding the case into ISIL militants who killed three people on March 20, 2014, in the Central Anatolian province of Niğde. 

At least 43 civilians, including women and children, were killed on March 27 by airstrikes carried out by the U.S.-led coalition aircraft in western Mosul, according to a senior Iraqi military officer.        

Iraq is investigating air strikes in west Mosul that reportedly killed large numbers of civilians in recent days, a military spokesman said on March 26.

Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım invited his Iraqi counterpart, Haider al-Abadi, to Turkey during a phone conversation between the two leaders on March 14, Iraqi Ambassador to Turkey Hisham al-Alawi told a group of journalists a day later.

As the fighting in Mosul rages on, the number of civilian casualties and displacements have grown significantly. While vowing to avoid civilian casualties by all means, the US is adamantly helping to maintain the siege until every single jihadist dies there.

Iraqi forces have retaken more than a third of west Mosul from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a commander said, as Baghdad's troops fought March 12 to advance deeper into the city. Iraqi forces launched the operation to recapture west Mosul,  the most populated urban area still under ISIL control, on Feb. 19, retaking a series of areas as they advanced up from the south.

"I came [today] from a liberated Mosul… This is the first time that the Iraqi army is fighting with Kurdish Peshmerga forces side by side against ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] … [But] winning the war means nothing unless we also win peace," Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi said during a keynote speech at the fifth annual Sulaymaniyah (Suli) Forum last week, entitled "Beyond Da

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has fled Mosul and has apparently delegated tactical control of the battle for the city to local commanders, US defense officials have said.