Conflicting reports have emerged over whether Iraqi forces battling Islamic State near Mosul have breached the eastern districts of the city as a coalition including special forces units, tribal fighters and Kurdish paramilitaries pushes ahead with their offensive.

A special forces commander told Reuters that troops had entered the eastern district of Karama on the outskirts of Mosul, but subsequent reports appeared to show that they had dug in within a kilometre of the contested city, Isis’s last key urban stronghold in Iraq.

“Tonight, if everything is secured, we will be 700 metres from Mosul,” Lt Col Muntadhar al-Shimmari, of the elite counter-terrorism forces, told Agence France-Presse, shortly after troops took one of two remaining Isis-held towns that stand between them and Mosul’s eastern suburbs.