BREAKING NEWS

Iraqi forces battle Islamic State in towns north of Baghdad

BAGHDAD - Iraqi soldiers backed by Shi'ite militia and Kurdish peshmerga forces attacked two towns northeast of Baghdad held by Islamic State fighters on Sunday, trying to clear a main road linking the capital to the border with Iran.
Peshmerga and army officers said they advanced into Jalawla, 115 km (70 miles) from Baghdad, and the nearby town of Saadiya, which they have been trying to recapture from Islamic State since the radical Islamists seized them in August.
Ten soldiers, peshmerga and militia fighters were killed and 32 were wounded in Sunday's fighting, a source at Khanaqin Hospital told Reuters. There were no immediate casualty figures for Islamic State fighters.
Iraq's Shi'ite-led government, backed by US-led air strikes, has been trying to push back the Islamic State since it swept through mainly Sunni Muslim provinces of northern Iraq in June, meeting virtually no resistance.
Last week the army broke a months-long siege of the country's largest refinery north of Baghdad, but Islamic State fighters continue to take territory in the western province of Anbar, which shares borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.