A member of the Iraqi forces walks past a tank as an army convoy drives towards Kurdish peshmerga positions on October 15, 2017, on the southern outskirts of Kirkuk.

:: Iraqi troops launched an assault on the last ISIS group bastion in the country on Thursday even as the Kurds said Baghdad’s forces had attacked their fighters near the border with Turkey.

There had been fears that the bitter dispute that has raged between the Baghdad government and Iraqi Kurdish leaders since they held a referendum for independence last month would hamper the campaign against the militants.

Iraqi forces have retaken more than 90 percent of the territory ISIS seized in the country in 2014, with the militants now confined to a stretch of the Euphrates Valley adjoining some of the last areas they still hold in Syria.

“The heroic legions are advancing into the last den of terrorism in Iraq to liberate al-Qaim, Rawa and the surrounding villages and hamlets,” Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said.

“They will all return to the arms of the motherland thanks to the determination and endurance of our fighting heroes,” he added.

“The people of ISIS have no choice but to die or surrender.”

The US-led coalition battling ISIS said it was “the last big fight” against the militants.

On the Syrian side of the border, Russian-backed government forces have been pushing down the Euphrates valley while US-backed Kurdish and Arab fighters have been attacking the militants from the north.

The launch of the offensive against ISIS’ last Iraqi redoubt comes with thousands of Iraqi federal troops and militia engaged in an operation to reassert federal control over thousands of square kilometres (miles) of territory long disputed with the Kurds.

On Thursday, federal troops and allied paramilitaries stepped up that operation, assaulting Kurdish forces in a disputed oil-rich area of Nineveh province in the far north near the Turkish border, Kurdish authorities said.

“As of 6 am, Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed PMF (Hashed al-Shaabi – Popular Mobilisation Forces) are shelling peshmerga positions from Zummar front, northwest Mosul, using heavy artillery,” the top defence body of the autonomous Kurdish regional government said.

“They are advancing towards peshmerga positions.”