“Iraqi joint forces have established control over the road linking western Mosul to the besieged city of Tal Afar,” Musa Hasan Julaq, a leader of Iraq’s Hashd al-Shaabi forces, told Anadolu Agency.

Tal Afar lies roughly 80 kilometers to the west of Mosul.

According to Julaq, the road’s capture means that those parts of western Mosul still held by the ISIL terrorist group will now be entirely surrounded by the army.

In mid-February, Iraqi forces -- backed by a U.S.-led air coalition -- began fresh operations aimed at purging remaining ISIL terrorists from Mosul’s western districts. 

The offensive comes as part of a wider operation launched last October to retake the entire city, which ISIL overran -- along vast swathes of territory in northern and western Iraq -- in mid-2014.