27 killed in Iraq airstrikes, clashes

At least 27 people were killed Monday in airstrikes and clashes between the Iraqi security forces and insurgent militants, including those of the Islamic State (IS) Sunni radical group, security sources said.

In Salahudin province, at least 10 IS militants were killed in airstrikes believed to be carried out by US warplanes on IS positions at al-Zuwiyah village outside the city of Baiji, some 200 km north of Iraq's capital Baghdad, a provincial security source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

In the eastern province of Diyala, Iraqi security forces, backed by Shia militia, carried out an operation at a village near the town of Maqdadiyah, and killed Abu Baker al-Shishani, a provincial leader of the IS group, and captured four of his aides, a provincial security source told Xinhua.

Separately, heavy clashes occurred during the day when Kurdish security forces, known as Peshmerga, repelled an attack by IS militants in Kobashi area outside the militant-seized town of Jalawlaa, some 130 km northeast of Baghdad, Mahmoud Sinkawi, a Peshmerga leader, told reporters.

Also =Monday morning, five IS militants were killed and eight others wounded, including three local leaders, when a bomb was apparently accidentally detonated inside a makeshift hospital in central Jalawlaa, a provincial security source told Xinhua.

The huge blast destroyed part of the house, which was seized by militants three weeks ago to serve as a hospital to treat wounded fighters, the source said.

The ethnically mixed town of Jalawlaa has been the scene of fierce clashes between Peshmerga forces and IS militants who captured the town in mid-August.

Meanwhile, Peshmerga fighters recaptured three villages around the militant-seized town of Qara-Tabba, 175 km northeast of Baghdad, killing at least two militants, the source said.

In northern Iraq, a paramilitary security force formed by the Yazidi minority group clashed fiercely with IS militants in a village outside the militant-seized town of Sinjar, which is located some 100 km west of Nineveh's provincial capital city of Mosul, leaving six IS militants and three Yazidis dead, a provincial security source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

IS militants took control of Sinjar in early August, prompting dozens of thousands of its Yazidi residents to flee to nearby Sinjar mountain.

The Yazidis are primarily ethnic Kurd. Their religion incorporates elements of many faiths. There are about 600,000 Yazidis remaining in Iraq with roughly 80 percent of them living in the towns of Sinjar and Bashika in Nineveh province.

The security situation began to drastically deteriorate in Iraq since June 10, when bloody clashes broke out between Iraqi security forces and hundreds of IS militants.

The IS took control of the country's northern city of Mosul and later seized swathes of territories after Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts in Nineveh and other predominantly Sunni provinces.

--Indo-Asian News service

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