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The mortar was dropped into the launch tube, but nothing happened. A prod, a kick and a shake failed to stir it. Eventually one of the Kurdish fighters at this position near Mosul unceremoniously tipped the tube upside down, picked up the offending shell and lobbed it over the sandbags, where mercifully it failed to explode.

About 100 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters were at this frontline position in Eski Mosul late last week, perhaps the most contested piece of real estate in northern Iraq. It sits at a junction that leads from Mosul to Tal Afar and beyond to the Syrian border -- a critical supply line for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Supported by coalition air strikes, the Kurds swept down to seize the area late last month.

Now they are engaged in daily battles with ISIS fighters, many of whom are local, according to Kurdish commanders who listen in on ISIS radio communications.

Between the sandbags and through the haze, a white building 800 yards away protected an ISIS position. After one mortar was (this time successfully) fired at the building, a sniper's bullet shot over the Kurds' position with a faint hiss -- as if to say "You missed."

The Peshmerga are now well dug in at Eski Mosul with mortar batteries, at least one MILAN anti-tank missile and heavy machine guns. The MILAN is especially useful for taking out vehicles rigged up as suicide bombs. The wreckage of one sits just 100 yards from the Kurds' defensive positions.

In two days, the Peshmerga say, ISIS sent 20 vehicle bombs up the road, a sign of how badly the terrorists want to retake this position. One had 8.5 tons of TNT primed to explode, according to Kurdish commanders, but its driver was shot and killed before he could detonate the device.

The importance of the crossroads was evident from the presence of a small detachment of British military personnel who covered their faces and quickly drove off at the first sign of a television crew. "No photos please," pleaded their Kurdish minder.

On the way to Eski Mosul, the villages around Zumar show the scars of ISIS occupation. Some buildings occupied by the group had been razed by air strikes. But many more were blown up by ISIS fighters as they retreated. Others were booby-trapped with cleverly-hidden explosive devices to await families coming home.

One elegant villa on a hill had been reduced to a jagged mix of concrete and steel wire. Crushed between cement slabs was a flat screen TV; a staircase lay at a crazy angle. The owner -- a Kurd -- stood outside, curling amber beads between his fingers. His nephew had come to the house with three others, he said. They opened the front door and there was a massive explosion.

The commander of this area and head of the Kurdistan Region Security Council is Masrour Barzani, one of Kurdish President Massoud Barzani's sons. At his well-guarded hilltop base, he waved his hand across a map of the region. The Peshmerga have retaken some 5,000 square miles of territory since the high-water mark of ISIS' expansion in this region, and now guard a front of some 700 miles -- an area stretching from Sinjar in the north to Kirkuk in the center of Iraq.

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