Security forces free villages in northern Iraq

Iraqi security forces on Wednesday freed several villages from the Islamic State (IS) militants as the troops are preparing to recapture a town in the country's northern province of Nineveh, while the extremist IS militants seized a district in western Iraq, security source said.

In northern Iraq, the Kurdish security forces, known as Peshmerga, backed by U.S.-led coalition aircraft at dawn launched a major offensive on the positions of IS militants near the town of Wanna, just south of Iraq's largest Mosul Dam on the Tigris River, about 70 km north of Nineveh's provincial capital city of Mosul, a Kurdish security source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The offensive is designed to attack Wanna from three directions to free it from the IS militants. So far the troops managed to free seven villages around the town, leaving at least 11 militants killed and eight wounded, the source said, citing initial reports as the battles are still underway.

The Kurdish troops are at the edges of Wanna and are preparing to enter the town, while the warplanes of the international coalition have been pounding the IS positions inside the town, the source added.

The IS militants seized the dam and several nearby areas, including Wanna, during their advance in northern Iraq in June, but the Peshmerga fighters backed by the international coalition aircraft freed the dam in mid-August.

Separately, an army force teamed up with a Peshmerga and allied Sunni tribesmen clashed with the IS militants and freed Sultan Abdullah village in east of the militants-seized town of Qaiyara, some 50 km south of Mosul, which itself located some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a security source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

In Iraq's western province of Anbar, the IS militants captured al-Zankoura district in the western part of the provincial capital city of Ramadi, some 110 km west of Baghdad, after fierce clashes with the Iraqi police and allied Sunni tribesmen, leaving seven policemen and tribesmen killed and wounding 13 others, a provincial security source told Xinhua without giving details about the casualties among the IS militants.

The security situation in Iraq began to drastically deteriorate on June 10, when bloody clashes broke out between the Iraqi security forces and the IS group, an al-Qaida offshoot, who took control of the country's northern province of Nineveh and later seized swathes of territories after Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts in other predominantly Sunni provinces. Endit