Across the Tigris River to the east, the army landed paratroopers in Albu Ajeel, a village where Iraqiya state television said some insurgents had fled. One army officer in the fighting said they were surprised the resistance they experienced was less fierce than expected.
Five civilians including two young girls and an elderly woman were killed when by stray fire from an army helicopter, a local police officer said.
The Sunni insurgency is led by the Islamic State, which shortened its name from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) after last month’s advance into Iraq and declared its leader caliph – ruler of all Muslims.
It now controls a swathe of territory from Aleppo in Syria close to the Mediterranean to the outskirts of Baghdad.
In Iraq last month it initially won the support of other armed Sunni groups, including tribal fighters and Saddam loyalists, but there have been signs that those groups are turning against the al Qaeda offshoot in recent days.
Residents of a town north of Baghdad found 12 corpses with execution-style bullet wounds on Monday following fighting overnight between Islamic State fighters and the Naqshbandi Army, a group led by Saddam loyalists.
Washington hopes a more inclusive government in Baghdad could save Iraq by persuading moderate Sunnis to turn against the insurgency, as many did during the “surge” offensive in 2006-2007 when U.S. troops paid them to switch sides.
Two suicide bombers detonated explosive-packed cars at a restaurant on the road between Samarra and Tikrit, a witness said. A doctor at Samarra hospital said 12 soldiers and volunteer fighters were killed in the blast.
In the town of Mada’in, southeast of Baghdad, two bombs at an army recruitment centre killed nine people, police and medical sources said. In Yousefiya, also south of Baghdad, four soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb on their patrol.
In Falluja, which fell to Islamist militants and other insurgents in January, shelling and air strikes began near dawn and continued through the morning. A doctor at Falluja hospital said five people were killed and 17 wounded, including a child. Helicopters dropped barrels loaded with explosive in the town of Karma, northeast of Falluja, killing four civilians and wounding 22, a source at the town’s hospital said. The hospital was later bombed so severely that it could not receive patients, the source said.
Fighting has yet to reach Baghdad itself, but the capital is frequently attacked by bombers. Two car bombs in quick succession in the Shi’ite Sadr City district killed 12 people and wounded more than 20, police and hospital sources said.
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