COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. It is a fight to take down ISIS as one of its last major strongholds in Iraq. The battle for Mosul, the country's second largest city, now under way. Iraqi-led forces already making headway inflicting heavy damage on ISIS troops. ISIS, of course, is fighting back. Watch as our Nick Paton Walsh tries to file a report from the front lines.</s>NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: -- much international support, a lot of coalition planning. American power --</s>COSTELLO: OK so Nick wisely got out of the way. He wasn't hurt in that exchange, by the way. In the meantime, the U.S. is leading the coalition's air offensive in a battle that could go on for months. CNN's senior international correspondent, Arwa Damon, live just outside of Mosul. Hi, Arwa.</s>ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi. Good morning. And much of the fighting that we saw today was really concentrated in the villages and the plains that you see behind us. There's still smoke rising from some of these villages. It was much thicker earlier in the day. We saw coalition airstrikes. We are still hearing fighter jets buzzing overhead. There was artillery rocket fire. Fairly intense firefights that took place, as well. And we also saw other explosions, sending up massive, plumes of smoke that could have been suicide car bombers, a very familiar ISIS tactic at this point. Now the Iraqi government is saying that they along with the Kurdish Peshmerga and other --
Battle For Mosul, Last Main ISIS Stronghold In Iraq.