By Mohamed Waleed, Ibrahim Saleh and Serhat Shakir

BAGHDAD (AA): Iraqi army forces have penetrated Daesh’s defenses in two districts of Mosul and are now engaged in heavy street-fighting with the terrorist group, an Iraqi military commander said Tuesday.

“After fierce resistance shown on Daesh’s first line of defense, security forces have managed to penetrate Mosul’s northeastern Sukkar district and its eastern Al-Tamim district,” Staff Brigadier General Shukr al-Nuaimi told Anadolu Agency.

In a related development, U.S. General Stephen Townsend, commander of an international coalition against Daesh, arrived in Baghdad on Tuesday to discuss the ongoing Mosul campaign with Iraqi officials, Iraqi Army Colonel Nawras al-Saedi told Anadolu Agency.

According to al-Saedi, Townsend — accompanied by his deputy, General Robert Jones — was received at Baghdad’s international airport by Iraqi Army Chief-of-Staff General Othman al-Ghanmi.

During a brief meeting, al-Saedi said, al-Ghanmi had urged the coalition commander to continue providing the Iraqi army with weapons and equipment even after Daesh’s expulsion from Mosul.

Last month, the Iraqi army — backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and local allies on the ground — launched a wide-ranging offensive to retake Mosul, which was overrun by the terrorist group in mid-2014.

[Photo: Smoke rises at oil wells, were set on fire by Daesh terrorists as they fled after Al Qayyarah town’s cleansing from Daesh militants as the operation to retake Iraq’s Mosul from Daesh continues, in Al Qayyarah Town of Mosul, Nineveh, Iraq on November 22, 2016. Photographer: Muhabiri Hemn Baban/AA]