Iraqi soldiers bore down on a vital bridge over the Tigris River in Mosul's city centre as the seven-week battle to recapture ISIL's last stronghold in the country intensified, the army said.

Lieutenant-General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah, the campaign's commander, was quoted by Iraqi television as saying on Tuesday that troops had entered Al-Salam Hospital, less than 1.5km from the Tigris, which runs through Iraq's second-largest city.

Air raids by the US-led coalition aided the ground advance in the Salam neighbourhood.

"Starting before dawn, we heard more than 20 air strikes," said Fathii Muhammad Yousef, who took cover from the clashes with his family in their home just a block from the front.

INTERACTIVE: Battle for Mosul - Who controls what

For the past month Iraqi forces have battled ISIL fighters on the streets just outside Yousef's home. Four of his neighbours have been wounded by gunfire and shrapnel so far in the operation, he said.

The offensive involved the army's Ninth Armoured Division, which had been tied up for more than a month in close-quarter combat with fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) on Mosul's southeastern edges.

A colonel in the armoured division said Tuesday's assault aimed to push towards the river and ultimately reach Mosul's Fourth Bridge, the southernmost of five bridges spanning the Tigris, which splits the city in two.

"We are using a new tactic - increasing the numbers of advancing forces and also attacking from multiple fronts to take the initiative and prevent Daesh [ISIL] fighters from organising any counterattacks," the colonel said on condition of anonymity.

The bridge, like three others, has been hit by US-led air strikes to prevent ISIL sending reinforcements and suicide car bombs across the city to the eastern front, where counterterrorism troops have spearheaded the army campaign.

The last and oldest bridge, built of iron in the 1930s, was targeted on Monday night. The structure was not destroyed, but the air strikes made two large craters in the approach roads on both sides.

ISIL soon after began to fill the craters, sources told Al Jazeera.

The army push in the southeast comes as federal police units stationed west of the Tigris prepare a separate advance towards the airport on the southwestern edge of the city.

Defeating ISIL in Mosul would roll back the self-styled caliphate it declared in Iraq and Syria in 2014 after seizing large parts of both countries.

About 100,000 Iraqi soldiers, security forces, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, and mainly Shia paramilitary forces are participating in the Mosul campaign that began on October 17.

READ MORE: Mosul residents 'won't leave' despite dire conditions

Although it has made advances inside eastern Mosul, the army says it is battling in the toughest urban warfare imaginable - facing hundreds of suicide car bomb attacks, mortar barrages, sniper fire, and ambushes launched from a network of tunnels.

Its advance has also been slowed by the presence of more than one million residents in the city.

The battle for Mosul has created a burgeoning humanitarian crisis with an estimated 650,000 people without potable water.

As the fight has ground on, Yousef's family has run out of water and is running low on food.

"All we have now is well water. It's not clean enough to drink, but what else can we do?" he said, adding that the water is making some of his youngest children sick.</s>Iraqi army fires towards Daesh positions in Mosul from the village of Adhbah, south of Mosul on Tuesday (Reuters photo)

BAGHDAD/ERBIL — Iraqi army units surged towards the centre of Mosul on Tuesday in an attack from the city's southeastern edges that could give fresh impetus to the seven-week-old battle for Daesh's Iraqi stronghold.

Campaign commander Lieutenant General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah was quoted by Iraqi television as saying troops had entered Salam Hospital, less than 1.5km from the Tigris River running through the city centre.

If confirmed, that would mark a significant advance by the Ninth Armoured Division, which had been tied up for more than a month in close-quarter combat with Daesh on the southeastern fringes of the city.

Residents of Daesh-controlled districts of east Mosul said by telephone the army had punched deep into the east bank of the city, getting close to the Tigris.

“The fighting right now is very heavy — Iraqi forces have gone past our neighbourhood without entering it. Our area is now practically surrounded by the river and the Iraqi forces,” said a resident of the Palestine neighbourhood.

Daesh’s news agency appeared to confirm the advance, saying three car bombers struck the troops near Salam Hospital.

A Reuters team saw thick black smoke rising from the area around the hospital. “We made good advances today,” said a soldier who identified himself as Abu Ahmed.

Mosul is by far the largest city under Daesh control and defeat there would roll back the self-styled caliphate it declared in 2014 after seizing large parts of Iraq and Syria.

Some 100,000 Iraqi soldiers, security forces, Kurdish peshmerga fighters and mainly Shiite paramilitary forces are participating in the Mosul campaign that began on October 17, with air and ground support from a US-led coalition.

A colonel in the armoured division said Tuesday’s assault, launched at 6am, aimed to ultimately reach Mosul’s Fourth Bridge, the southernmost of five bridges spanning the river.

The bridge, like three others, has been hit by US-led air strikes to prevent Daesh sending reinforcements and suicide car bombs across the city to the eastern front.

The last and oldest bridge, built in the 1930s, was targeted on Monday night, two residents said. The structure was not destroyed, but the air strikes made two large craters in the approach roads on both sides.

“I saw Daesh using bulldozers to fill the craters with sand and by midday vehicles managed to cross the bridge normally. I drove my car to the other side of the bridge and saw also Daesh vehicles crossing,” a taxi driver told Reuters.

The army says it is facing the toughest urban warfare imaginable — hundreds of suicide car bomb attacks, mortar barrages, sniper fire and ambushes launched from a network of tunnels. More than a million civilians are still in the city.

The colonel said Tuesday’s offensive aimed to overwhelm the militants, who have put up stiff resistance but are hugely outnumbered by the attacking forces.

“We are using a new tactic — increasing the numbers of advancing forces and also attacking from multiple fronts to take the initiative and prevent Daesh fighters from organising any counterattacks,” the colonel said by telephone.

He said the four armoured division regiments, whose tanks and heavy armour have struggled to adapt to street-by-street fighting, had been reinforced by an infantry regiment.

They were aiming for the Wahda neighbourhood, a sprawling southeastern district. Wahda could serve as a launchpad for an advance to the Fourth Bridge, he said.

The extremists, who seized Mosul in mid-2014, are believed to be dug in across the city, but a US general in the coalition supporting Iraqi forces told Reuters they appeared to have committed additional defences to the fight in the east.</s>BAGHDAD — The Iraqi army says troops have entered another held by the Islamic State group in the southeastern part of Mosul.

The commander of a joint operations that oversees the Mosul campaign, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Yarellah, says that soldiers from the 9th Division took over the hospital building in the al-Salam on Tuesday.

He did not provide more details but said the troops "continue clearing" the from IS militants.

Iraqi forces, backed the U.S.-led international coalition, launched a campaign in October to retake Mosul, the country's second largest city and IS's last major urban bastion in Iraq.

Most gains have been made by special forces operating in the section of Mosul east of the Tigris River, while other forces are advancing on the city from other directions.</s>Campaign commander Lieutenant General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah was quoted by Iraqi television as saying troops had entered Salam Hospital, less than a mile (1.5 km) from the Tigris river running through the center of Mosul.

If confirmed, that would mark a significant advance by the army's Ninth Armoured Division, which had been tied up for more than a month in deadly, close-quarter combat with Islamic State fighters on the southeast edges of the city.

A colonel in the armored division said Tuesday's assault, launched at 6 a.m., aimed to push towards the river and ultimately reach Mosul's Fourth Bridge, the southernmost of the five bridges spanning the Tigris which splits the city in two.

The bridge, like three others, has been hit by U.S.-led air strikes to prevent Islamic State sending reinforcements and suicide car bombs across the city to the eastern front, where counter-terrorism troops have spearheaded the army campaign.

The last and oldest bridge, built of iron in the 1930s, was targeted on Monday night, two residents said. The structure was not destroyed, but the air strikes made two large craters in the approach roads on both sides.

Militants immediately began to fill the craters, the residents told Reuters by telephone.

"I saw Daesh using bulldozers to fill the craters with sand and by midday vehicles managed to cross the bridge normally. I drove my car to the other side of the bridge and saw also Daesh vehicles crossing," said a taxi driver.

Mosul is by far the largest city under Islamic State control and defeating its fighters there would roll back the self-styled caliphate it declared in Iraq and Syria 2014 after seizing large parts of both countries.

Some 100,000 Iraqi soldiers, security forces, Kurdish peshmerga fighters and mainly Shi'ite paramilitary forces are participating in the overall Mosul campaign that began on Oct. 17, with air and ground support from a U.S.-led coalition.

Although it has made advances inside eastern Mosul, the army says it is battling the toughest urban warfare imaginable - facing hundreds of suicide car bomb attacks, mortar barrages, sniper fire and ambushes launched from a network of tunnels.

Its advance has also been slowed by the presence of more than 1 million residents in the city.

The army colonel said Tuesday's offensive aimed to overwhelm the militants, who have put up stiff resistance but are hugely outnumbered by the attacking forces.

"We are using a new tactic - increasing the numbers of advancing forces and also attacking from multiple fronts to take the initiative and prevent Daesh fighters from organising any counter-attacks," the colonel said by telephone.

He said the four armored division regiments, whose tanks and heavy armour have struggled to adapt to street-by-street fighting, had been reinforced by an infantry regiment.

They were aiming for the Wahda neighborhood, a sprawling southeastern district that extends some distance into the city. Wahda could serve as a launchpad for an attack on the Fourth Bridge, he said.

It was not immediately possible to confirm whether troops had reached Salam hospital, deep inside Wahda neighborhood, but one person in Mosul contacted by telephone said he had heard from other residents that the army had advanced close to it.

The army push in the southeast comes as federal police units stationed west of the Tigris prepare a separate advance towards the airport on the southwestern edge of the city.

Residents have reported mortar fire and increased air strikes in the western half of the city, possibly in advance of a land offensive that would open up another front in the city and further stretch Islamic State defences.

The Sunni Muslim jihadists, who seized Mosul in mid-2014, are believed to be dug in across the city, but a U.S. general in the coalition supporting Iraqi forces told Reuters they appeared to have committed additional defences to the fight in the east.

Brigadier General Scott Efflandt said the coalition had expected the main defences to be in the west of the city, which is more densely populated and has a greater concentration of Sunni Muslims than the eastern section.

"What we thought was going to be the strongest defence, now they have already hedged their bets and brought it forward," said Efflandt, a coalition deputy commanding general.

"The quality of the enemy we are facing now is markedly declined from a month ago ... what they were saving for the west side of the river they are now committing to the east."

Echoing comments from Iraqi officers, he said the rate of suicide car bombings - which stand at a total of over 650 so far, according to the army - had dropped off recently.

He also said that the number of militants in the city had probably fallen to around 3,000, from around 3,000 to 5,000 at the start of the campaign.

Iraq officials have not given any casualty figures for their own forces. Last week the United Nations said nearly 2,000 members of Iraq's security forces had been killed in November - a figure Baghdad says was based on unverified reports - and that more than 900 police and civilians had also been killed.</s>MOSUL, Iraq -- Islamic State counterattacks in southeastern Mosul inflicted heavy losses on Iraqi forces overnight after a new push deeper into the city this week, according to an Iraqi army officer.

Despite the counterattacks, the fresh Iraqi push appears to have relieved pressure on Iraq's special forces who largely have been leading the fight inside the city on the eastern front. Wednesday afternoon, the special forces announced new gains. The troops retook another neighborhood, moving them closer to the Tigris River, which divides Mosul's east from west, according to the commander of a joint operations center that oversees the Mosul campaign.

Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Yarellah, said in a statement that troops had "fully liberated" the al-Elam neighborhood and raised the Iraqi flag over its buildings. Yarellah added that Islamic State militants "suffered losses" without elaborating.

Also Wednesday, the Islamic State's Amaaq news agency released a propaganda video showing captive British photojournalist John Cantlie in what appeared to be central Mosul. Cantlie is seen detailing the U.S.-led coalition's destruction of four of Mosul's five main bridges in a series of airstrikes last month that he describes as inflicting harm on the city's sizable civilian population.

The Islamic State has long used Cantlie for propaganda purposes, featuring him in videos from Mosul as well as the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Kobani, likely speaking under duress. As Mosul's bridges were destroyed last month, this is the first confirmation that Cantlie is alive since he appeared in an Islamic State video in July.

At a small field hospital near Mosul's eastern front line, medics said that by midday Wednesday they had treated about a dozen Iraqi soldiers with gunshot and shrapnel wounds. As progress into militant-held Mosul has ground on slowly, a field hospital that was once no more than a few cots in an open lot, has become more established. Military hospital cots sat in a driveway of a nearby abandoned building flanked by IV stands and oxygen tanks.

The medics spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to brief the media.

The Iraqi army said Tuesday that its troops retook the al-Salam hospital and pushed the front line back more than a mile, but Iraqi forces have quickly advanced into Mosul only to be pushed back by counterattacks at night.

"Daesh waited until night to attack the troops," Iraqi army Sgt. Maj. Hakim Saranbii said. He added that the attacks "inflicted heavy losses," without giving specific casualty figures or further details. Iraqi Defense Ministry officials in Baghdad did not immediately comment.

Convoys of dozens of armored Iraqi special forces and army Humvees could be seen moving into the southeastern neighborhood Wednesday morning.

"What we see here is the enemy reacting to a new axis of advance," said coalition spokesman U.S. Army Col. John Dorrian, explaining that the new push is putting increased pressure on the Islamic State.

The Iraqi government has not publicized the casualty figures for its troops and paramilitary forces fighting in Mosul and elsewhere in northern Iraq. Last week, the U.N. said in a report that nearly 2,000 Iraqi troops were killed last month, but after coming under fire from the media arm of the Iraqi military, it announced it would discontinue publishing casualty figures for Iraq's security forces.

Backed by the U.S.-led international coalition, Iraqi government troops and paramilitary forces opened the campaign in October to dislodge Islamic State militants from Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city and the last major Islamic State urban bastion in the country. Progress in Mosul has been slowed by heavily armored Islamic State car bombs, snipers and networks of tunnels that allow the fighters to move without being seen by U.S.-led coalition aircraft.

Elsewhere, bombing attacks hit commercial areas in and around the capital, Baghdad, on Wednesday, killing at least 17 civilians and wounding 57, police and health officials said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group, which has staged dozens of similar attacks in the past.

Information for this article was contributed by Murtada Faraj and Sinan Salaheddin of The Associated Press.</s>MOSUL, Iraq (AP) — The Iraqi army on Tuesday pushed into another neighborhood held by the Islamic State group on the southeastern edge of Mosul, according to a military statement and Iraqi commanders on the ground.

The commander of a joint operations center that oversees the Mosul campaign, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Yarellah, said that soldiers from the 9th Division took over the hospital building in the al-Salam neighborhood.

"The hospital was a Daesh base," said Iraqi army Lt. Ahmed Abu Fadl, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

"They were treating their wounded there," he added, explaining that he hoped retaking the building would hurt the militants' ability to launch organized counterattacks.

Iraqi troops pushed past barricades made of dirt and rubble to slowly cross the main road marking the front line on the edge of al-Salam. The front had remained static for weeks as Iraqi forces slowly cleared homes and built up defenses before Tuesday's push.

IS snipers perched in the minarets of nearby mosques fired on the advancing troops and a suicide car bomb struck one of the convoys. At least two military vehicles carrying the wounded could be seen speeding back from the front.

"Starting before dawn we heard more than 20 airstrikes," said Fathii Muhammad Yousef who took cover from the clashes with his family in their home just a block from the front. For the past month Iraqi forces have clashed with IS fighters on the streets just outside Yousef's home. Four of his neighbors have been wounded by gunfire and shrapnel so far in the operation.

As the fight has ground on, Yousef's family has run out of water and is running low on food. "All we have now is well water, it's not clean enough to drink, but what else can we do?" he said, explaining the water is making some of his youngest children sick.

Clashes in Salam neighborhood continued into the evening.

Iraqi forces, backed the U.S.-led international coalition, launched a campaign in October to retake Mosul, the country's second largest city and IS's last major urban bastion in Iraq. Most gains have been made by special forces operating in the section of Mosul east of the Tigris River, while other forces are advancing on the city from other directions.

In an audio recording published online, the newly-appointed spokesman of IS, Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir, urged the fighters in Mosul and the Syrian city of Raqqa to keep up the fight and not to retreat. In his nearly 30-minute speech, al-Muhajir called on Muslims and "Caliphate soldiers" to strike inside Turkey and against its diplomatic missions as well as launching attacks in other parts of the world.

It was not clear when the recording was produced; it was distributed by the militant group's al-Furqan media arm late Monday night. Al-Muhajir replaced Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, who was killed in an airstrike in August.

IS captured Mosul in the summer of 2014 as part of a blitz that placed nearly a third of Iraq under their control, along large swaths of neighboring Syria. Iraqi troops, federal police and allied Shiite and Sunni militias have over the past year pushed IS militants from most of the vast Sunni province of Anbar, west of Baghdad, and areas to the north and east of the Iraqi capital.</s>BAGHDAD — The Iraqi army on Tuesday entered another neighborhood held by the Islamic State group in the southeastern part of Mosul, a statement said.

The commander of a joint operations center that oversees the Mosul campaign, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Yarellah, said that soldiers from the 9th Division took over the hospital building in the al-Salam neighborhood.

Yarellah did not provide more details but said the troops have "continued clearing" the neighborhood of IS militants.

Iraqi forces, backed the U.S.-led international coalition, launched a campaign in October to retake Mosul, the country's second largest city and IS's last major urban bastion in Iraq. Most gains have been made by special forces operating in the section of Mosul east of the Tigris River, while other forces are advancing on the city from other directions.

In an audio recording published online, the newly-appointed spokesman of IS, Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir, urged the fighters in Mosul and the Syrian city of Raqqa to keep up the fight and not to retreat. In his nearly 30-minute speech, al-Muhajir called on Muslims and "Caliphate soldiers" to strike inside Turkey and against its diplomatic missions as well as launching attacks in other parts of the world.

It was not clear when the recording was produced; it was distributed by the militant group's al-Furqan media arm late Monday night. Al-Muhajir replaced Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, who was killed in an airstrike in August.

IS captured Mosul in the summer of 2014 as part of a blitz that placed nearly a third of Iraq under their control, along large swaths of neighboring Syria. Iraqi troops, federal police and allied Shiite and Sunni militias have over the past year pushed IS militants from most of the vast Sunni province of Anbar, west of Baghdad, and areas to the north and east of the Iraqi capital.</s>Federal police forces fire towards Daesh militants during clashes in the frontline village of Adhbah, south of Mosul, Iraq, on Tuesday (Reuters photo)

BARTALLA, Iraq — Iraqi forces battled extremists deep inside Mosul on Wednesday, edging closer to the River Tigris that divides the city and looking for a breakthrough in the seven-week-old offensive.

The fighting to retake Daesh's last major stronghold in Iraq has prompted a steady trickle of people to leave their homes, many taking refuge in camps where nighttime temperatures have dipped below freezing.

The 9th Armoured Division said it had retaken Al Salam Hospital in a push on Tuesday, the farthest the army has penetrated into east Mosul since the start of a broad offensive launched on October 17.

"We advanced in Al Salam district but the situation is difficult, there is heavy fighting," Brigadier General Shaker Kadhem told AFP.

"We took control of Al Salam Hospital, which was a command centre for Daesh," he said.

The five-storey building towers above the neighbourhood and the extremists had been using the upper floors and roof as sniper positions for some time, Mosul residents said.

The elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) has spearheaded the drive into Mosul in the past month, retaking several neighbourhoods in the east of the city.

The army also punched into Mosul in November but its progress has been slower and Iraqi forces barely control half of the eastern side of the city.

Kadhem said the goal of the latest push was to meet up with CTS forces on the banks of the Tigris in the southeast of the city.

A senior CTS officer said the fighting in Al-Salam was fierce and the army had asked for backup.

“The 9th Division’s situation is difficult and they have called for support. We are sending a regiment there,” the officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“They are surrounded now in Al Salam Hospital... we are on the way so we can open a passage for them.”

The Daesh-affiliated Amaq website said the militants had carried out five suicide car bomb attacks in the area during the past 24 hours.

It said the army was holed up in the hospital compound and had suffered heavy losses. Iraqi officers did not provide any casualty toll for the latest fighting.

The Joint Operations Command supervising the fight against Daesh said CTS forces had retaken the eastern Mosul neighbourhood of Ilam on Wednesday.

Officers and analysts had expected the eastern side of Mosul to offer less resistance but the going has been tough and Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi’s promise to retake Mosul by year’s end has looked increasingly in question.

Hashed Al Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) paramilitary forces have retaken significant ground in recent weeks on a western front targeting the town of Tal Afar, which lies on the road linking Mosul to Syria.

Forces on the southern and northern fronts made quick early gains when Iraq launched its largest military operation in years but progress has been slow in recent days.

One of the main factors hampering Iraqi forces in Mosul is the continued presence of hundreds of thousands of civilians, who either want to stay in their homes or are prevented from leaving by Daesh.

The United Nations on Wednesday put the overall number of people displaced by the offensive at more than 82,000.

That is still less than half the figure the UN expected before the operation was launched.

It its latest situation report, the UN spoke of spiralling civilian casualties as Iraqi forces went house to house in east Mosul, attempting to battle militants and protect civilians at the same time.

“Partners are rushing to bring trauma care closer to the front lines to give injured civilians the best chance of survival,” the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

It said work was also under way to repair water and electricity infrastructure in east Mosul, where it described the current water shortage as “critical”.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Mosul have gone days without drinking water and have had to boil water from boreholes to survive.</s>An Iraqi soldier from the 9th Infantry Division holds his machine gun while heading to the frontline in Shyma district in Mosul, Iraq, Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016. Iraqi forces, backed the U.S.-led international coalition, launched a campaign in October to retake Mosul, the country's second largest city and IS's last major urban bastion in Iraq. (AP Photo/Manu Brabo)

MOSUL, Iraq (AP) — Iraq special forces captured a new neighborhood Wednesday from the Islamic State group in eastern Mosul, according to a senior commander — the latest gain in a massive military operation now its seventh week.

The commander of a joint operations center that oversees the Mosul campaign, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Yarellah, said in a statement that troops had "fully liberated" the al-Elam neighborhood and raised the Iraqi flag over its buildings. Yarellah added that IS militants "suffered losses" without elaborating.

The announcement came hours after an overnight attack carried out by IS militants against Iraqi security forces in the southeastern part of Mosul, a day after troops advanced deeper into that part of the city, an army officer said.

The attack "inflicted heavy losses," Iraqi Army Sgt. Maj. Hakim Saranbii told The Associated Press, without giving specific casualty figures or further details. Iraqi Defense Ministry officials in Baghdad did not immediately comment.

On Tuesday, Army troops rolled into the southeastern neighborhood of al-Salam, taking a hospital before meeting stiff resistance from IS militants. Convoys of dozens of armored Iraqi special forces and army Humvees could be seen moving into the southeastern neighborhood Wednesday morning.

"What we see here is the enemy reacting to a new axis of advance," said coalition spokesman U.S. Army, Col. John Dorrian, explaining that the new push is putting increased pressure on IS.

After the advance on Tuesday, Iraqi forces said that they pushed the front line back more than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) and retook Mosul's al-Salam hospital, but only a few hundred meters (yards) appeared to be secured and clashes continued into the evening.

When Iraqi forces initially launched a push into eastern Mosul in early November, troops advanced rapidly at first but soon came under heavy counterattacks. Islamic State militants have depended on suicide car bombs, sniper fire and a network of underground tunnels to slow the security forces.

The Iraqi government has not publicized the casualty figures for government troops and paramilitary forces fighting in Mosul and elsewhere in northern Iraq. Last week, the U.N. said in a report that nearly 2,000 members of the Iraqi forces were killed last month, but after coming under fire from the media arm of the Iraqi military, it announced it would discontinue publishing casualty figures for Iraq's security forces.

Backed by the U.S.-led international coalition, Iraqi government troops and paramilitary forces launched the campaign in October to dislodge IS from Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city and the last major IS urban bastion in the country.

Elsewhere, a wave of bombing attacks hit commercial areas in and around the capital, Baghdad, on Wednesday, killing at least 17 civilians and wounding 57, police and health officials said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they bore all the hallmarks of the Islamic State group, which has staged dozens of similar attacks in the past.

Associated Press writers Murtada Faraj and Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad contributed to this report.</s>An Iraqi soldier holds his machine gun while heading to the frontline in Shyma district in Mosul, Iraq, Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016.

MOSUL, Iraq — Islamic State militants launched an overnight attack against Iraqi security forces in the southeastern part of Mosul, a day after troops advanced deeper into that part of the city, Iraq's military said Wednesday.

The attack "inflicted heavy losses," Iraqi Army Sgt. Maj. Hakim Saranbii told The Associated Press, without giving specific casualty figures or further details. Iraqi Defense Ministry officials in Baghdad did not immediately comment.

The setback came after Iraq's army on Tuesday rolled into the southeastern neighborhood of al-Salam, taking a hospital before meeting stiff resistance from IS militants. Convoys of dozens of armored Iraqi special forces and army Humvees could be seen moving into the southeastern neighborhood Wednesday morning.

"What we see here is the enemy reacting to a new axis of advance," said coalition spokesman U.S. Army, Col. John Dorrian, explaining that the new push is putting increased pressure on IS.

After the advance on Tuesday, Iraqi forces said that they pushed the front line back more than 1.2 miles and retook Mosul's al-Salam hospital, but only a few hundred yards appeared to be secured and clashes continued into the evening.

When Iraqi forces initially launched a push into eastern Mosul in early November, troops came under heavy counterattacks after advancing too far too quickly. Islamic State militants depend on suicide car bombs and sniper fire to derail the security forces, as well as a network of underground tunnels.

The Iraqi government has not publicized the casualty figures for government troops and paramilitary forces fighting in Mosul and elsewhere in northern Iraq. Last week, the U.N. said in a report that nearly 2,000 members of the Iraqi forces were killed last month, but after coming under fire from the media arm of the Iraqi military, it announced it would discontinue publishing casualty figures for Iraq's security forces.

Backed the U.S.-led international coalition, Iraqi government troops and paramilitary forces launched a campaign in October to dislodge IS from Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city and IS's last major urban bastion in the country.

Elsewhere, a wave of bomb attacks on Wednesday hit commercial areas in and around the capital, Baghdad, killing at least 17 civilians and wounding 57, police and health officials said.

The deadliest among a total of nine bombings took place in Baghdad's northern Sabi al-Bor area and the southeast suburb of Nahrawan where three civilians were killed in each attack, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks that bore all the hallmarks of the Islamic State group, which has staged similar attacks in the past.

Associated Press writer Murtada Faraj in Baghdad contributed to this report.
The Iraqi Army bears down on a strategic bridge across the Tigris River in Mosul. Fighting is occurring in the Salam neighbourhood less than 1.5 kilometres from the Tigris.