Scores of ISIS militants killed in strikes, clashes across Iraq

Baghdad, Sep 25: At least 22 people were killed in car bomb attacks and clashes with the militants of the Islamic State (IS) Sunni radical group across Iraq on Thursday, while airstrikes continued against positions of the IS in northern Iraq, security sources said.

In Kirkuk province, US warplanes carried out airstrikes against IS positions in Mullah Abdullah, Tal al-Wared and Mhawis areas in the western part of the oil-rich province, leaving dozens of IS militants killed and wounded, a provincial security source told Xinhua.

The source could not give further details about the casualties among the militants, but said they evacuated their casualties to the militant-seized city of Hawijah, some 220 km north of Iraq's capital Baghdad.

Meanwhile, a Kurdish security source told reporters that US and French warplanes dropped leaflets on the city of Hawijah, calling on civilians to leave their homes to avoid collateral damage from airstrikes.

In one attack, a booby-trapped car went off before noon near the government building in the city of Mahmoudiyah, some 30 km south of Baghdad, leaving three people dead and 14 wounded, the source told Xinhua.

Another attack followed when a car bomb detonated near the city hospital where ambulances and civilian cars brought the victims of the first blast to be hospitalised, killing two people and wounding six others, the source said.

In Salahudin province, at least five IS militants were killed in clashes in the morning with security forces backed by fighters of the Sunni tribe of Jubour in the town of Dhuluiyah, some 90 km north of Baghdad, a provincial security source told Xinhua.

Two more IS militants were killed in a premature explosion while they were planting a bomb north of Dhuluiyah, the source said.

Jubour tribesmen and local police have been fighting IS militants for more than two months and repelled many attacks by the extremist group which once seized the town but was driven out.

Separately, IS militants executed two shepherds near the town of Yathrib, about 80 km north of Baghdad, because they were from the Sunni tribe of Timim, which was known for its opposition to and fighting against the IS, the source added.

In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, Iraqi security forces backed by Shia militias and some 300 militants of Izza Sunni tribe carried out an offensive against the Islamic State militants in a cluster of villages north of the town of Mansouriyah, some 110 km northeast of Baghdad, a provincial security source told Xinhua.

The troops and allied militiamen managed to free 13 villages which have been under the control of IS militants for more than two months, the source said, adding that the fighting resulted in the death of eight militants and the destruction of six of their vehicles.

IANS