Incredible photos from the Battle of Mosul frontline show brave Peshmerga fighters hunting down ISIS thugs

The fight to re-capture Mosul started on October 17and was announced in a televised address by the country’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. The bloody fight is expected to last weeks, if not months, and over 30,000 coalition troops going in for the kill. Mosul, home to over two million people, is the last major stronghold of the terrorist group and officials say re-capturing the city would effectively defeat the terrorist group in Iraq. The stronghold has been held by the Islamic State since ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his Caliphate during a sermon there. Formerly booming Mosul is the main industrial city in northern Iraq and a vital hub in the flow of goods to and from Turkey and Syria. Its relative wealth and strategic significance grew after oil fields were discovered nearby in the 1920s and a major oil pipeline was built into Turkey. Located on the River Tigris, on the opposite bank from Biblical Nineveh, Iraq’s second largest city had a population of more than two million before ISIS took over in 2014. Its population always had a diverse mix of the diverse ethnic groups and, although most of the Jews were forced to leave in the 1950s, at the start of the 21st century the majority Arab Sunnis rubbed shoulders with Kurds, Turkmen, Assyrian Christians and Yazidis. ISIS unexpectedly seized control of Mosul in a matter of days in June 2014 after Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts and fled. They left behind huge caches of US-made military equipment and supplies which they used to storm across hundreds of miles of Iraq and neared the capital Baghdad before being pushed back. ISIS also plundered an estimated $500 million in cash and gold from the Central Bank of Mosul - which it has used to fund its military and terror operations.