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Dozens of IS militants killed in airstrike in northern Iraqi town

Xinhua, January 14, 2015 Adjust font size:

The U.S-led coalition warplanes carried out an airstrike on Tuesday and pounded a meeting place of IS leaders in the town of Tal Afar, leaving dozens of the militants and their leaders killed, the Kurdish source said.

Iraqi security forces also clashed the same day with the Islamic State (IS) militants in northern and central Iraq, security source said.

In Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, the Kurdish security force, known as Peshmerga, backed with heavy artillery clashed the IS militants in central the militant-seized town of Sinjar, a Kurdish security source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

In Salahudin province, the IS militants fired six Katyusha rockets on the central part of the city of Samarra, where the government compound and the provincial command located, without causing human casualties.

After the attack, a security force raided an area located in north of Samarra and seized the rockets launcher after a clash with the IS militants, leaving one soldier killed and 11 wounded, the source said.

Also in the province, a Shiite militiaman was killed and two others wounded when a booby-trapped house detonated while they were on a search operation in the town of Aziz-Balad, some 70 km north of Baghdad, the source added.

Meanwhile, the council of tribal leaders in Salahudin province demanded a probe into the fall of their province in the hands of the IS militants in June.

Salahudin's demand came after the Iraqi parliament formed a parliamentary committee to probe the fall of Mosul and large parts of the Nineveh province in the hands of the IS militants without fighting by the Iraqi security forces.

In Iraq's western province of Anbar, the mayor of the IS militant-seized city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, said that the Iraqi government approved the formation of a brigade volunteers from Fallujah residents to free their city from the IS extremist militants and to bring back the displaced families.

"The brigade is supposed to include 3,000 fighters from Fallujah residents, and will start training soon in the nearby huge air base of Habbaniyah," Faisal al-Issawi told reporters, adding that the Baghdad federal government and the U.S. forces will provide the training and the arming of the brigade. Endit