(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Dozens of Islamic State fighters were killed yesterday in strikes by US-led warplanes in western Iraq as part of an ongoing campaign against the radical militia, independent Iraqi portal Alsumaria News reported, citing an unnamed military official.
The alliance targeted Islamic State facilities in the area of Wadi Hauran west of Anbar province, the report added.
'The bombardment resulted in destroying trenches and arms warehouses as well as killing dozens of Daesh terrorists, the official in the army's Seventh Division said.
Iraq, supported by the US-led air coalition, is engaged in a fight to drive Islamic State from its last strongholds in the country.
Ramadi, the capital city of Anbar, was recaptured from the Al Qaeda breakaway group in December 2015.
In recent months, Islamic State has stepped up attacks in different parts of Iraq in order to counter an ongoing US-backed campaign aimed at dislodging the radical militia from its last key urban bastion of Mosul in northern Iraq.
Earlier yesterday, a suicide bomber killed nine civilians and injured 12 others in the city of Baquba north of the capital Baghdad, medical and police sources said.
A man wearing an explosives belt detonated it amid a crowded street in Baquba in the province of Diyala, sources said on condition of anonymity.
Police put the overall death toll at 10, including the attacker. So far, there has been no claim of responsibility.
Diyala, around 57 kilometres north of Baghdad, has recently seen repeated attacks by Islamic State that Iraqi forces drove from the province more than a year ago.
Last week, several soldiers were killed in an Islamic State attack on a military base on the outskirts of Baquba.
Meanwhile, Iraq's Iran-backed paramilitary force said it had dislodged Islamic State from a number of villages west of Mosul, scoring further progress towards the border with Syria.
The villages taken by the Popular Mobilisation paramilitary force include Kojo, where Islamic State fighters abducted hundreds of Yazidi women in 2014, including Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar, recipients of the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought.
Kojo and the other villages of the Sinjar mountain region will be returned to the Yazidi community, a Popular Mobilisation leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, told Iraqi state television.
Popular Mobilisation is taking part in the US-backed Iraqi campaign to defeat Islamic State in Mosul and the surrounding province of Nineveh.
The force reports nominally to Iraq's Shia-led government and has Iranian military advisers.
Iraq's government is aiming to control the border area with Syria in co-ordination with the Iranian-backed army of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Linking up the two sides would give Assad a significant advantage in fighting the six-year rebellion against his rule.
The region immediately alongside the border on the Iraqi side is either under the control of Islamic State or Kurdish forces.
Islamic State also controls parts of Syria. Iraqi government armed forces are focusing their effort on dislodging insurgents from the city of Mosul, Islamic State's de-facto capital in Iraq.
Since the campaign started in October, the insurgents have lost the city except for an enclave alongside the western bank of the Tigris river.
On Saturday Iraqi forces launched an operation to capture the enclave, which includes the densely populated Old City centre and three adjacent districts.
The fall of the city would, in effect, mark the end of the Iraqi half of the 'caliphate declared nearly three years ago by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from Mosul.
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