Tens of thousands of trapped Iraqi civilians are running out of food and medicine in the western city of Falluja, an Islamic State (IS) stronghold under siege by security forces, according to local officials and residents.

Iraqi forensic teams in the newly-recaptured city of Tikrit have started exhuming bodies from mass graves believed to contain some of the hundreds of soldiers killed by Islamic State (IS) militants last year, a government spokesman said yesterday.

Iraq’s armed forces, backed by Shi’ite militia, attacked Islamic State (IS) strongholds north of Baghdad yesterday as they launched an offensive to retake the city of Tikrit and the surrounding Sunni Muslim province of Salahuddin.