Bartella is a town that is located in the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq, about 21 kilometres east of Mosul.

The Northern Iraq offensive began on 4 June 2014, when the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, assisted by various insurgent groups in the region, began a major offensive from its territory in Syria into Iraq against Iraqi and Kurdish forces, following earlier clashes that had begun in December 2013 involving guerillas.