Battle rages for Tikrit

Iraqi forces entered a district of Tikrit yesterday, stepping up an offensive launched 10 days ago to wrest the northern city back from jihadists, army officers said.

The Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist group hit back with coordinated bomb attacks on government-held areas of the western city of Ramadi, killing at least 10 people, police and hospital sources said.

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A major general told AFP on condition of anonymity that government forces were battling "to cleanse the neighbourhood of Qadisiyah" in Tikrit.

"We were able to control Tikrit military hospital, which is close to the centre of the city," the hometown of executed dictator Saddam Hussein, he said.

"But we are engaging in a very delicate battle because we are not facing fighters on the ground, we are facing booby-trapped terrain and sniper fire. Our movement is slow," the officer said.

In a possible response to the fighting north of Baghdad, militants in the Islamic State stronghold of Anbar west of the capital launched 13 suicide car bomb attacks on army and security positions in the provincial capital of Ramadi, reported Reuters.

A resident welcomes a relative who belongs to militias known as Hashid Shaabi, in the town of al-Alam after it was freed by the Iraqi forces. Photo: AFP, Reuters

The government has for months been fighting off ISIS militants who control most neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Ramadi and regularly attack security forces in more central districts.

Some officials suggested the number of car bombs may have been even higher but added that ISIS failed to gain any ground.

Also on the front foot in Syria, the jihadists launched a "huge assault" yesterday to try to capture a strategic town on the border with Turkey, leaving dozens dead, a monitoring group said.

The assault focused on Ras al-Ain and the ISIS seized control of a nearby village, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said the offensive was a preemptive strike against Kurdish militia who were planning to attack the ISIS-held town of Tal Abyad farther west.

Tal Abyad is an Arab and Kurdish town in the Syrian province of Raqa used by ISIS jihadists as a gateway from Turkey. Foreign jihadists have flocked to Syria, often crossing over from Turkey.

Kurdish fighters are also locked in clashes with ISIS around the strategic town of Tal Tamr, just southeast of Ras al-Ain, which lies near a key road link to the jihadists' Iraqi bastion of Mosul.

ISIS has seized large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq and imposed a harsh interpretation of Islamic law.

The US-led coalition said Tuesday that forces fighting ISIS have cut critical communication and supply lines used by the extremists between Syria and Iraq after a two-week operation.