Nearly two weeks into the Mosul campaign launched by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, the advance along the Tigris river valley south of Mosul has been slower than on the eastern front, where Kurdish peshmerga fighters and an elite army unit have reached within a few km (miles) of Mosul.
The UN reports 232 civilians have been murdered in and near Mosul by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.