Iraqi federal police patrol in the destroyed Old City of Mosul (Reuters).
Iraq has begun an aerial bombardment of Tal Afar, a town under ISIS control west of Mosul, Baghdad-based al-Sumariya TV reported on Tuesday, citing an Iraqi Defence Ministry spokesman.
The ground attack to try to take the city should start when the air campaign is over, the spokesman, Mohammed al-Khodari, said, according to the TV channel.
Iraqi authorities had said Tal Afar, 80km west of Mosul, will be the next target in the war on the ISIS terrorist group that swept through swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014.
ISIS' self-proclaimed "caliphate" effectively collapsed last month, when US-backed Iraqi forces completed the recapture of the militants' capital in Iraq, Mosul, after a nine-month campaign.
Tal Afar, which had about 2,00,000 residents before falling to ISIS, experienced cycles of sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi'ites after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and has produced some of the terror group's most senior commanders.
© Thomson Reuters 2017