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Advancing Iraq troops enter strategic town on edge of Tikrit

06 March 2015 18:25 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Iraqi government forces and Iran-backed militiamen entered a town on the southern outskirts of Saddam Hussein's home city Tikrit on Friday, pressing on with the biggest offensive yet against Islamic State militants that seized the north last year, APA reports quoting Reuters.

Military commanders said the army and mostly Shi'ite militia forces had retaken the town of al-Dour on Tikrit's outskirts, known outside Iraq as the area where executed former dictator Saddam was found hiding in a pit near a farm house in 2003.

It was not immediately clear if the town had entirely fallen. Some officials said the troops were still only in the south and east of the town, which had been rigged with bombs by retreating Islamic State fighters.

But Hadi al-Amiri, leader of the largest Shi'ite militia group taking part in the operation, said al-Dour had been "totally liberated" and that the advance on another key town north of Tikrit, al-Alam, would take place on Saturday.

The army, joined by thousands of Shi'ite militiamen backed and advised by Iran, is five days into an advance on Saddam's home city of Tikrit, by far the biggest target yet in a campaign to roll back last year's advance by Islamic State fighters.

The assault by the Shi'ite-led army and its militia allies on Tikrit in Iraq's Sunni heartland has symbolic importance for both sides. Officials said on Friday they had captured a farm to the east of Tikrit that belonged to Saddam's deputy Ezzat Ibrahim al-Douri, now a prominent ally of the jihadist fighters.

Douri, King of Clubs in the U.S. army's deck of cards depicting Saddam-era officials wanted after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, is the only member of Saddam's inner circle still at large. Recordings purportedly of him pledging allegiance to Islamic State last year were one of the factors that helped the militants portray themselves as liberators of Sunni territory.

Tikrit is the first major city that Iraq's forces have attempted to recapture from Islamic State in northern Iraq, and the government hopes the campaign will reverse the momentum that saw the fighters sweep across the north last year.