27 killed in blasts, clashes with IS in Iraq

At least 27 people were killed on Thursday in separate bomb attacks and clashes with Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq's provinces of Salahudin and Anbar, security sources said.

In Salahudin province, Iraqi security forces and allied Shia and Sunni militias continued their clearing operations in the provincial capital city of Tikrit, while explosives experts were defusing dozens of roadside bombs and booby-trapped buildings, a provincial security source told Xinhua news agency on condition of anonymity.

However, some militiamen set fire to some houses while many other buildings were bombed, the source said, adding that in some cases the blasts and fires were made by the experts when they found difficulties in defusing some booby-trapped buildings.

On Tuesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared the liberation of Tikrit, some 170 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, after month-long battles with IS militants when around 30,000 Iraqi troops and thousands of Shia and Sunni militias became involved in Iraq's biggest offensive to recapture from IS militants the northern part of Salahudin province, including Tikrit and other key towns and villages.

Large sectors of the province have been under IS control since June 2014, after bloody clashes broke out between Iraqi forces and IS.

Meanwhile, Iraqi aircraft pounded an IS safe-house in al-Mazraa area, just south of the partially militant-seized town of Baiji, some 200 km north of Baghdad, leaving six IS militants dead, the source said.

Separately, four members of the Hashid Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization militias, were killed and 12 others wounded when IS militants attacked their checkpoint south of the city of Samarra, some 120 km north of Baghdad, the source added.

Also in Salahudin province, security forces clashed with a group of IS militants near the town of Alam, just east of Tikrit, killing nine of them and capturing three others, he said.

In Iraq's western province of Anbar, IS militants seized a bridge in Zagarit area, just west of the provincial capital city of Ramadi, which is located some 110 km west of Baghdad, after fierce clashes with the security forces, killing six soldiers and wounding 11 others, a provincial security source told Xinhua.

In addition, a woman and a child were killed and four other civilians wounded in artillery shelling on the IS-held city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, the source said.

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 Shia militias have pushed them back.