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the fighters were all originally from the Kirkuk area and Hawija.

Islamic State has been pushed in recent months out of places closer to Baghdad, such as Ramadi, Fallujah and Beiji.

Instead, Iraqi forces went straight for the high-profile prize of Mosul.

There is tension between Baghdad and the Kurdistan regional government over the future of the province and whether it will become part of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region.

Sunni Arabs are the majority in Hawija, as well, though it is unclear whether the local population will back the Sunni extremists of Islamic State, who failed to rally residents of Kirkuk to their side in the recent attack.

Hawija is now one of Islamic State’s last remaining hubs for assembling car bombs and roadside explosive devices that have devastated cities and towns throughout Iraq and proved to be the militants’ deadliest weapon against allied Iraqi forces pushing into Mosul, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.

“It’s like a knife sticking in the side of northern Iraq,”

“We believe the government hurried up to liberate Mosul before Hawija for political reasons,”

“Military plans are being made now about how to liberate Hawija and where the operation will start.”

Gen. Qadr shared photos he said were taken from a dead militant’s tablet computer after the recent Kirkuk assault that showed a GPS-marked trail he took to get to Kirkuk from Mosul. It included a stop in Hawija.

In contrast, the U.S. military during its last war in Iraq had access to thousands of Iraqi prisoners—and the intelligence they provided. But observers said the lack of detainees this time around reflects an ISIS eager to fight. And it shows the limits of a war in a city littered with bombs and tunnels, and home to hundreds of thousands of civilians.

You can’t do these capture operations in the middle of the urban warfare. It’s too dangerous

In the war against ISIS in Mosul, the number of fighters detained is the dog that doesn’t bark. ISIS repeatedly has urged its troops to fight to the death, declaring anything short of that punishable by execution.

Human Rights Watch offered a more troubling explanation for the lack of reported detainees, saying it believes that Iraqi and Kurdish forces have detained “at least 37 men from areas around Mosul and Hawija suspected of being affiliated with the Islamic State” and that government officials have not allowed those detainees to make outside contact.

To be sure, both Iraqi and Kurdish forces have arrested hundreds of fighters but what it is less clear is how many have remained in custody.

There are international rules for the treatment of prisoners of war but each nation decides how to treat its own criminals. And therefore it is up to the Iraqi government if it will expend resources to bring a case against a prisoner through its tenuous court system.

When roughly 100 ISIS fighters launched a surprise attack last month on the Iraqi city of Rutbah, for example, half the ISIS fighters involved were killed in the 36-hour battle, U.S. Air Force Col. John Dorrian told The Daily Beast.

There could be more ISIS detainees in the weeks ahead, as Iraqi Security Forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters start the block-by-block clearance of Mosul, Pentagon officials said, as it will be much harder for ISIS militants to flee in that urban environment. Iraqi security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga forces first reached the city borders last week.

The U.S. troops joining local forces in the push against Mosul are only there in an advisory role, Pentagon officials have said.

"There was not a lot of time," one U.S. official told CNN on condition of anonymity. "The threat of execution was imminent."

The firefight represents the first time U.S. forces stepped into combat against ISIS in Iraq, one U.S. official said.

Thirty troops from Delta Force on an "advise and assist role" participated in the raid when Kurdish "Cobra" commandos were overwhelmed after entering the walled compound on their own, the official said.

Four Peshmerga soldiers were wounded, officials said

70 Kurdish hostages were rescued.

The mission did not represent a change in U.S. tactics in Iraq, Cook said.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz said the Pentagon, not the White House, signed off on the operation under the U.S. military mission against ISIS.

there are 70 people whose lives were saved as a result of this," Cook said.

20 ISIS fighters were killed and six were captured

In a statement, Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, commander of the U.S. Central Command, described the mission as "complex and highly successful."

"Our gratitude and heartfelt condolences go out to this young man's family, his teammates and friends."

The operation came more than a month after Kurdish security forces said the Islamist militant group ISIS kidnapped dozens of men near Hawija. It wasn't immediately clear whether the overnight rescue was related to this early September kidnapping.