Jihadists blow up Iraqi army HQ in Ramadi

More than 40 Iraqi soldiers were killed when ISIS blew up the Iraqi army headquarters near Ramadi in Iraq's western Anbar province, an Anbar provincial leader told CNN, as the battle continues for control of key cities in Iraq.

Ramadi has been the focus of a fierce ISIS assault since Wednesday, launched at the same time as Iraqi forces made gains against the Sunni extremist group in an offensive in Tikrit, about 100 miles to the north.

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ISIS fighters in Ramadi dug a tunnel underneath the army headquarters and detonated hundreds of homemade bombs, Sabah Al-Karhout, the head of the Anbar Provincial Council, said Thursday. The headquarters are located in the Albu Diab area, just 4 kilometers north of Ramadi.

Al-Karhout also denied reports that the US-led coalition had bombed the headquarters.

A statement released early yesterday by the US-led coalition against ISIS said the Iraqi security forces had successfully repelled the ISIS attack on Ramadi, despite coming under attack from several directions on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Iraqi forces yesterday battled Islamic State jihadists making what looked increasingly like a last stand in Tikrit, but the group responded by vowing to expand its "caliphate".

Thousands of fighters surrounded a few hundred ISIS holdouts, pounding their positions with helicopter and artillery strikes but treading carefully to avoid the thousands of bombs littering the city centre.

Two days after units spearheading Baghdad's biggest anti-ISIS operation yet pushed deep into Tikrit, a police colonel claimed around 50 percent of the city was now back in government hands.

Iraqi Shia fighters launch rockets towards ISIS group in the city of Tikrit. Photo: AFP

Massively outnumbered, the jihadists are defending themselves with a network of booby traps, roadside bombs and snipers, with suicide attackers occasionally ramming car bombs into enemy targets.

Tikrit was the hometown of dictator Saddam Hussein, remnants of whose Baath party collaborated with the jihadists when they took over almost a third of the country last June.

With crucial military backing from neighbouring Iran and a 60-nation US-led coalition, Baghdad has rolled back some of the losses.

Commanders see the recapture of overwhelmingly Sunni Arab Tikrit as a stepping stone for the reconquest of second city Mosul further north, which once had a population of two million.

On Thursday, the group released a recording said to be a speech by spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani accepting a pledge of allegiance by Nigeria's Boko Haram jihadist group.

"We announce to you the good news of the expansion of the caliphate to West Africa," he said.

Expansion is a pillar of ISIS doctrine, and the group has recently declared new "provinces" in the Middle East and North Africa, albeit sometimes in places where it has a limited footprint.