30 killed in airstrike, clashes with IS militants in Iraq

A total of 30 people were killed and 27 others wounded on Monday in a U.S.-led coalition airstrike and clashes with the Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq, security source said.

In Salahudin province, 13 IS militants, including foreign fighters, were killed when the security forces repelled an attack by dozens of IS militants on military positions near the village of Mazraa, just south of the refinery town of Baiji, which located some 200 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, Colonel Saad Nufous, police chief of Baiji told Xinhua by telephone.

The troops also managed to seize weapons and vehicles left by the IS militants while they withdrew from the scene, Nufous said.

Also in the province, a total of eight security members were killed and 13 others wounded in separate clashes in west of the city of Samarra, about 120 km north of Baghdad, in Allas oil field near the town of Alam and al-Fatha area in north of Baiji, a provincial security source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Salahudin province has been the scene of Iraq's biggest offensive since March 2, which involved some 30,000 Iraqi troops and thousands of allied Shiite and Sunni militias aimed at recapturing the northern part of the province, including Tikrit and other key towns and villages, from IS militants.

In Iraq's western province of Anbar, a U.S.-led airstrike hit a group of IS militants on a bridge in south of the IS-held city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, leaving nine militants killed and 14 others wounded, along with destroying part of the bridge, a provincial security source anonymously told Xinhua.

The IS group has seized parts of Iraq's largest province Anbar and tried to advance toward Baghdad, but several counter attacks by security forces and Shiite militias have pushed them back.

The security situation in Iraq has been drastically deteriorated since June last year, when bloody clashes broke out between Iraqi security forces and the IS. Endit