Iraqi forces have launched a campaign to retake a key area north of the capital Baghdad and dislodge Islamic State militants.

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.

At least 32 people were killed and 90 wounded in two bomb explosions in the Syrian city of Homs, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Iraq’s air force claims it has struck a convoy carrying Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State (IS).

IS militants have reduced the amount of water flowing to government-held areas in Iraq’s western Anbar province, an official said.

Islamic State (IS) extremists have unleashed a wave of suicide attacks targeting the Iraqi army in western Anbar province, killing at least 17 troops.

A military operation has been launched to drive Islamic State out of the western Anbar province of Iraq, where the extremists captured the provincial capital Ramadi earlier this month.

Defence secretary critical of US bid to help Iraq fight Islamic State

IS militants are thought to have killed up to 500 people — Iraqi civilians and soldiers — and forced 8,000 to flee from their homes as they captured the city of Ramadi, a provincial official said.

About 500 people – both civilians and Iraqi soldiers – are estimated to have been killed over the last few days as the city of Ramadi fell to the Islamic State group.

Militants unleashed a wave of bombings yesterday targeting commercial areas in and around the Iraqi capital, killing at least 18 civilians, officials said, as clashes continued between government forces and Islamic State militants in the western province of Anbar.

TWO connected events of recent days represent a huge moral challenge to the West and Africa’s functioning states, especially its oil-rich Arab countries. 

A video released by the Islamic State group yesterday appears to show the killing of two different groups of captured Ethiopian Christians by the extremist group’s Libyan affiliates.

Australian authorities are looking into Islamic State claims that an Australian teenage recruit died after blowing himself up in Iraq, and local media reported that bomb-making materials had been found at his family home in Melbourne.

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.

A top figure in Islamic State’s self-declared police force, which has carried out beheadings, was himself found decapitated in eastern Syria, a monitoring group said.

The video showing what the fifth beheading victim of the Islamic State militant known as Jihadi John was released just hours after reports emerged that he was injured in an allied air strike.

Iraqi officials said yesterday that an airstrike wounded the leader of the Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Pentagon officials said they had no immediate information on such a strike or al-Baghdadi being wounded.

An airstrike has wounded the leader of the Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, according to Iraqi officials.

Islamic State (IS) group extremists have lined up and shot dead at least 50 tribesmen, women and children in Iraq’s Anbar province, officials said, in the latest mass killing committed by the group.

Islamic State militants carried out a mass killing of hundreds of Iraqi prison inmates when they seized the country’s second-largest city of Mosul in June, according to an international rights group.

Suspected Islamic State bombers assassinated an Iraqi provincial police chief and killed 28 people in an attack on a Kurdish security headquarters yesterday a second straight day of mass attacks that killed scores.

A triple suicide bombing has killed 26 members of Kurdish security forces north east of Baghdad while a roadside bomb killed the police chief of the western Anbar province.

Twin bombings near an elementary school in Syria killed at least 22 people, including at least 10 children, with the second blast going off as screaming parents frantically searched for their sons and daughters.

Newly outraged by the beheading of yet another Western hostage, diplomats from around the world are in Paris pressing for a coherent global strategy to combat extremists from the Islamic State group.

The Arab League has agreed to combat extremists such as the Islamic State group as one of its suicide bombers killed 16 people at a meeting of Sunni tribal fighters and security troops in Iraq.

In his debut novel ‘Fives And Twenty Fives’, former marine Michael Pitre joins a long line of US writers who fictionalised their war experience, reports Michael Clifford

Some 4,000 Iraqi volunteers are being airlifted to an embattled city west of Baghdad to help bolster government forces locked in a running battle with Sunni militants there.

The unfolding debacle in Iraq has set off a furious — and drearily predictable — partisan dispute in Washington over who was more to blame: George W Bush or Barack Obama, writes Bill Powell

Al-Qaida-inspired militants have pushed deeper into Iraq’s Sunni heartland, conquering Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit as soldiers and security forces yielded ground once controlled by US forces.

Al-Qaeda-inspired militants seized effective control of Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, expanding their offensive closer to the Iraqi capital as mass beheadings were being reported.

Al Qaida-inspired militants have seized control of Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit.

A series of car bombs exploded across Iraq’s capital tonight, killing at least 52 people in a day of violence that saw militants storm a university in the country’s restive Anbar province and take dozens hostage, authorities said.

Attacks across Iraq, including a series of bombings targeting shoppers in a Sunni neighbourhood in the capital Baghdad, have killed at least 16 people today.

Iraqi authorities have closed down a notorious prison west of Baghdad over security concerns, the justice minister said.

At least 12 people have been killed in a series of bombings around Baghdad today, Iraqi officials said.

US secretary of state John Kerry said yesterday that the United States will support Iraq’s fight against al Qaeda-linked militants who have overrun two cities, but won’t send in US troops.

A new wave of bombings has caused carnage in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, killing at least 20 people.

A senior Iraqi military commander has said it will take a few days to fully dislodge al-Qaida-linked fighters from two key western cities.

Iraq’s prime minister has warned that weapons and fighters flowing into Syria are now making their way to Iraq, as a rising tide of violence sweeps across the country.

Four schoolchildren have been killed by a suicide car bomb in Iraq, officials said today.

Al-Qaida’s front group in Iraq has claimed responsibility for dozens of deadly attacks in the Sunni-dominated western Anbar province this summer.

A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged belt at a gathering of his own family in western Iraq, killing his pro-government cousin and six other relatives, officials said today.