Reuters/Baghdad
Iraqi security forces battled Islamic State militants in central Tikrit yesterday as the United States and its allies provided aerial support and local officials warned that the battle to retake the Sunni Muslim city would not be quick.
“A rapid advance in a city where the ground is littered with bombs and booby-traps is too tough to achieve,” said Mayor Osama al-Tikriti.
IS fighters stormed into Tikrit last June during a lightning advance in which they seized swathes of Sunni Iraqi territory before finally being halted outside Baghdad.
Complicating matters around Tikrit was a decision by most Iranian-backed Shia armed groups to boycott the current offensive in protest against the US-led air strikes that began on Thursday at the request of the Baghdad government.
The Shia militias, aligned with Tehran, have repeatedly said they do not need US support to drive the IS militants from Tikrit, home city of late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussain.
The security forces and Shia militias, who provided the largest number of fighters, began their offensive on March 2 but halted operations after two weeks due to heavy casualties and tensions within the government and with US officials over Iran’s prominent role.
The battle remains slow-going. At least 17 security personnel have been killed in fighting and another 100 wounded around Tikrit since Thursday when the US air strikes began, a security officer said.
Yesterday, an attempt to infiltrate Tikrit from the southern district of Shisheen was thwarted by militants. They used anti-tank missiles to destroy a bulldozer being used by the military to clear a path around booby-trapped roads, an official said.
Fighting to the south of Tikrit underscored the high stakes of the war against IS as even areas under government and militia control near Baghdad remain vulnerable to lightning-fast attacks by the militants.
IS ambushed an Iraqi army and Shia paramilitary base near Dujail yesterday, killing six paramilitary volunteers and wounding 14 others, a security official said.
The clashes in the countryside around Dujail, just 54km from Baghdad, lasted until sunset and involved two suicide bombers and machine gunners in pick-up trucks.
In Baghdad, at least seven people were killed in three bombings yesterday, while a soldier also died in a bomb blast targeting a convoy in Tarmiyah just north of the capital.
