SALAHADDIN / KIRKUK / ANBAR, Iraq
At least 52 people have been killed and almost a hundred injured across Iraq on Monday as security forces responded to Islamic State (IS) attacks in the north.
Local residents in Kirkuk's Havijah district said that Iraqi army's air offensives on IS points in Riyadh and Zab towns, some 45 kilometers south of Kirkuk province, killed at least 28 people and injured 10 others.
Fourteen of the dead and the 10 wounded are claimed to be mostly civilians.
Ahmed Meri, a Havijah resident, spoke to AA on the phone to explain the civilan casualties, saying that the bombs dropped by army aircraft fell onto civilian residential areas.
Meanwhile, 18 of the overall casualties from Monday's death toll were Iraqi security personnel who were killed when an IS militant exploded a bomb-laden vehicle near a security check point used by both Iraqi police and army forces in Salah ad din province, local security sources told Anadolu Agency.
The assault that was succeeded by another IS bomber who blew himself up also left 55 people wounded.
In a separate incident, six security personnel have been killed during violent clashes between Islamic State-led militants and Iraqi armed forces backed by Sunni tribes in Haditha district of northern Anbar province, which remains under control of Iraqi security forces.
Army sources told AA that two of the casualties were tribesmen and the other four were soldiers from the fighting which also left 34 others severly injured.
Anbar Police Chief Ahmad Sadak al-Dulaimi said Haditha District Governor Abdul-Hakim al-Jughaifi was also wounded during the clashes, adding that armed forces continue their advance despite casualties.
Dulaimi said the district governor together with his tribe was in the conflict zone to support army forces against IS-led militants.
Late Saturday, the U.S. military jets conducted coordinated airstrikes against the militants points in the vicinity of the Haditha Dam to "prevent terrorists from further threatening the security of the dam" to avert any possible failure or flooding that could threaten U.S. personnel and facilities in and around capital Baghdad.
U.S. Air Forces have conducted a total of 143 airstrikes across Iraq, since President Barack Obama authorized military forces to protect U.S. facilities in Iraq and to support Iraqi security forces and Kurdish peshmerga fighters battling IS militants.
The recent IS-led chaos in the already fragile country has so far displaced an estimated 1.2 million Iraqis from their homes, and has mainly targeted Shiite Muslims, Turkmen, Ezidis, and Christians. The group, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, have captured swaths of land in Iraq and Syria, declaring a caliphate.
www.aa.com.tr/en
