Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

The bid to seize back Mosul dam from extremists falters as US backed forces are hampered by explosive devices

A Kurdish peshmerga fighter prepares his weapon at his combat position near the Mosul Dam at the town of Chamibarakat outside Mosul, Iraq Photo: AP

7:01PM BST 18 Aug 2014

The American backed offensive to recapture Iraq's biggest dam slowed on Monday, as fighters from the Islamic State rigged part of the area with booby traps and remotely triggered bombs.

Whilst a series of air strikes by American F-18 fighter jets reportedly sent most of the jihadists fleeing from the central parts of Mosul dam, a network of landmines and planted explosives they left behind impeded Kurdish ground forces from recapturing the strategically vital terrain.

"The jihadists have escaped from their positions beside the water pumps – the most important levers for the dam," said General Kawa Kawani, spokesman for the Kurdish special forces. "But we cannot enter the area because of the explosives."

Kurdish peshmerga, Iraqi government troops and the United States joined forces over the weekend in an offensive to regain control of Mosul hydroelectric dam on the Tigris river, a structure that provides water and electricity to hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the region. 

The dam, which holds back 11 billion cubic meters of water and produces over 1,000 megawatts of electricity, has the potential to be used as a "weapon of mass destruction", experts have warned.

If the dam is intentionally damaged – or even just not properly maintain, it could unleash a 60 foot high wall of water that would submerge Mosul, Iraq's second city, drowning hundreds of thousands of people and even flooding parts of Baghdad.

On Monday US fighter jets launched 15 air strikes in areas around the dam, continuing the biggest US offensive in Iraq since it pulled its troops from the country in 2011.

President Barack Obama told Congress that the air strikes were part of "protecting US interests in Iraq".

"The failure of the Mosul dam could threaten the lives of large numbers of civilians, endanger US personnel and facilities, including the US Embassy in Baghdad, and prevent the Iraqi government from providing critical services to the Iraqi populace," Mr Obama said.

Peshmerga forces and some Iraqi government troops had made quick progress towards the dam over the weekend, seizing control of three villages nearby, and coming within a few miles of the main structure.

However, that advance was stalled by an elaborate network of landmines and remotely detonated explosives, which killed two peshmerga fighters and wounded several more.

"The Islamic State clearly have highly sophisticated bomb experts in their ranks," said General Kawani. "Two of their car bombs were detonated by mobile phones."

Fighting also continued elsewhere in the wide area around the dam's lake.

The Telegraph watched as fighter jets bombed the western edge of the lake, sending up plumes of smoke.

Peshmerga troops in armoured trucks, followed by camouflage ambulances, sped forwards towards the fighting, and an exchange of gun and mortar fire could be heard.

The US on Monday also blacklisted two Islamic extremists in Iraq and Syria, including the Islamic State spokesman, following similar actions by the UN Security Council last week.

America blacklisted the Nusra Front, an affiliate of al-Qaeda in Syria in 2012, but has so far failed to proscribe the more extreme Islamic State.

Monday's announcement, which put Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the Islamic State spokesman on its list of 'Specially Designated Global Terrorists' was a move in that direction.

However, Tarek al-Hashemi, Iraq's fugitive vice president warned that attacking only the Islamic State was not the solution to the recent Iraqi crises.

"The United States summarises the whole dilemma into attacking (Islamic State) only. This is not going to put an end to the Iraqi issue," Mr Hashemi, a Sunni sentenced to death in 2012 after an Iraqi court convicted him of running death squads, told Reuters in an interview in Istanbul.

Many Iraqi Sunnis who have sided with the Islamic State are Baathists loyal to the former regime of Saddam Hussein and resent being ruled by a Shia led government.

If Iraq's crisis is to be solved, Mr Hashimi said, Baathists should once again play a part in ruling Iraq: "There is only one way to accommodate them, to invite them to sit at the round-table and be a partner in the (revival) of the political process."

The ethnic, political, and religious divisions are apparent in northern Iraq, where the Islamic State has only been able to secure its control over large parts of northern Iraq by winning the support of local Arab communities.

"Almost all the Arab villages have sided with Isis," raged one Kurdish peshmerga fighter on Monday. "We helped develop their areas with our oil wealth, and now look how they repay us!" These tensions, Mr Hashimi warned, have already brought the country to the "brink of civil war".