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Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Isis militants have stormed the town of Rutba in the west of Iraq, just two days after the jihadi force shocked the country with a surprise attack on the northern city of Kirkuk.

The recent attacks come as the Iraqi military, Kurdish peshmerga forces and allied militia push forward in a joint offensive under the air cover of the US-led international coalition to recapture Mosul, one of Iraq’s biggest cities..

The fight is expected to be the biggest battle yet in a two-year struggle against Isis, and the biggest military operation in Iraq since the 2003 US invasion.

These surprise Isis assaults highlight how vulnerable Iraq will be to attack even as it wrests back the last 10 per cent of its territory still under the control of the Islamist insurgents, who swept through northern Iraq in the summer of 2014 after its stunning capture of Mosul.

The attacks on Kirkuk and Rutba also appear to be an attempt to draw away Iraqi forces — and local attention — just as the military gets within 10km of Mosul’s city limits. Iraqi security officials say militants co-ordinated with sleeper cells to launch the overnight attack on Rutba, which lies on an international highway around 110km from the Jordanian border.

Pro-Isis media said the jihadi force sent a suicide bomber into Rutba and it had seized half the city. A local Iraqi security official also confirmed that as much as half of Rutba could be in Isis hands and said military reinforcements had been sent in but would be unable to repel the militants until dawn.

Some local media outlets said the jihadi fighters had taken over some of Rutba’s mosques, announcing their return on loudspeakers. Security has been visibly tighter in many cities and some towns have imposed curfews, said Faisal al-Essawi, mayor of Amriyat al-Fallujah, near Baghdad.

On Saturday, Isis launched a surprise attack on the Kurdish-controlled, oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Its fighters holed up in two hotels and stormed a nearby power station and mosque.

In the past year, Iraqi forces have steadily been making gains against Isis but are wary of retaliatory attacks as the jihadi group loses ground. Such attacks may also increase suspicion of the more than 3m Iraqis displaced by the fighting with Isis. The militants are believed to infiltrate groups of civilians fleeing for safety, a suspicion that has been used by some Iraqi officials to try to block the flow of displaced people.

*The Financial Times