BAGHDAD -- A coalition of Shiite militias, regular Iraqi army units and Kurdish forces, backed by U.S. air power, on Sunday broke a long siege of Amirli, a town in northern Iraq that for weeks had been surrounded by Sunni extremists who threatened to slaughter thousands of Shiite residents.
The U.S. airstrikes on positions held by fighters of the Islamic State near Amirli, about 105 miles north of Baghdad, were carried out Saturday night in conjunction with airdrops of supplies to the town's thousands of besieged residents. The U.S. operation was supporting a ground offensive led by Shiite militia fighters, many of whom once fought fierce battles against American soldiers.
Iraqi spokesman Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said the operation started at dawn Sunday and that the forces entered the town shortly after midday.
Speaking live on state TV, al-Moussawi said the forces suffered "some casualties," but did not give a specific number.
According to the health office in the northern city of Kirkuk, seven Iraqi government troops and two members of the Kurdish forces known as the peshmerga were killed in the attack.
Security officials said Sunday that Amirli, a cluster of farming villages whose population is dominated by about 15,000 Shiite Turkmens who are considered infidels by the Islamic State, was not fully liberated but that the combined forces had cleared several villages from the militants. Fierce fighting in the area continued Sunday afternoon.
Amirli has been surrounded by the militants since mid-July. Many residents said the Iraqi military's previous efforts to fly in food, water and other aid had not been enough, as they endured the oppressive August heat with virtually no electricity or running water.
Nihad al-Bayati, who had taken up arms with fellow residents to defend the town, said some army units had already entered while the Shiite militiamen were stationed in the outskirts. He said residents had fired into the air to celebrate the arrival of the troops.
"We thank God for this victory over terrorists," al-Bayati said from the outskirts of Amirli. "The people of Amirli are very happy to see that their ordeal is over and that the terrorists are being defeated by Iraqi forces. It is a great day in our life."
State TV stopped regular programs and started airing patriotic songs after the victory announcement, praising the country's security forces. They have been fighting the militants for weeks without achieving significant progress on the ground.
Elsewhere in Iraq, a suicide bombing killed 14 people in the western province of Anbar , officials said.
On Sunday night, Iraqi police officials said a suicide driver rammed an explosives-laden car into a police checkpoint in Ramadi city, killing 14 people, including nine policemen. About 27 people were also wounded in the attack.
Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar province, is 70 miles west of Baghdad.
Hospital officials confirmed the casualties. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Also, 10 Kurdish fighters were killed by roadside bombs that Islamic State militants had planted near the town of Zummar in the north, said Ari Harsin, a Kurdish lawmaker.
Nations step forward
On Saturday night, the Pentagon said American planes had carried out airstrikes on several Islamic State positions, destroying three Humvees, one armed vehicle, a tank and an Islamic State checkpoint. In addition, U.S. aircraft, along with aircraft from France and Britain, dropped humanitarian aid into Amirli.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said his government would join the international aid efforts, in delivering rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and assault rifle ammunition.
Australia has said it has F/A-18 Hornets standing ready to join U.S. airstrikes in Iraq if requested by the U.S. and Iraqi governments.
Abbott said Sunday that the United States had not requested that Australia play a combat role. If such a request were made, Abbott said, it would be considered if it fits the criteria of an achievable overall objective with a clear role for Australian forces.
Australia had previously made humanitarian airdrops including food and water to thousands of people stranded by fighting on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq.
German officials also said Sunday that their country would soon begin sending enough high-end rifles, anti-tank weapons and armored vehicles to equip a brigade of 4,000 Kurdish peshmerga fighters battling Islamic extremists in Iraq.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the arms would complement humanitarian aid that Berlin is sending to help civilians uprooted by the fighting.
For the United States' part, the Pentagon said, two airplanes dropped 10,500 gallons of water and about 7,000 packages of field rations.
The Pentagon statement said the U.S. operations "will be limited in their scope and duration as necessary to address this emerging humanitarian crisis and protect civilians" trapped in Amirli.
The U.S. also launched airstrikes near Mosul Dam -- the largest in Iraq -- allowing Iraqi and Kurdish forces to retake the facility, which had been captured by Islamic State fighters.
The U.S. Central Command said another airstrike on Sunday near Mosul Dam destroyed an Islamic State armed vehicle. The latest airstrikes, carried out by fighter aircraft and unmanned drones, brought the total number of airstrikes across Iraq to 120 since Aug. 8.
The operation around Amirli is the latest expansion of U.S. military operations in Iraq in recent weeks. First, the U.S. military sent warplanes and drones to destroy millions of dollars of U.S. equipment that had been abandoned on the battlefield by the Iraqi army and seized by the Islamic State. U.S. forces also air-dropped humanitarian aid around Mount Sinjar, where thousands of civilians from the Yazidi minority had been trapped seeking refuge.
Now, the United States has provided air support for several Iranian-backed Shiite militias that are leading the fight against the Islamic State with the help of Kurdish peshmerga forces and Iraqi army units.
Reluctant allies
Both the United States and Iran, while not coordinating operations in Iraq, are nevertheless on the same side in the conflict against the Islamic State. The U.S., though, has been reluctant to pursue military operations with Iraq's Shiite militias.
The militias have taken on a primary role in providing security in Baghdad and responding to the advances of the Islamic State; the Iraqi army, which had been financed and trained by the United States, has proved largely ineffective.
President Barack Obama has said U.S. airstrikes will be limited to such humanitarian missions and to protecting American personnel and facilities until Iraq forms a more "inclusive" government that better represents the country's ethnic and religious groups.
The Obama administration has tried to avoid being seen as taking sides in Iraq's sectarian war because the militias are especially feared by Iraq's Sunni population.
The nature of the two sides in this war has become increasingly evident as the conflict has evolved. The Sunni extremists of the Islamic State have been rampaging through Iraq, beheading some of those it captures, carrying out large-scale massacres of Shiites and expelling hundreds of thousands of residents. The Shiite militias, which have in the past been responsible for abuses against Sunni civilians, are largely protecting their own communities and have proved essential to the defense of Baghdad.
Among the militias fighting for Amirli are Asaib Ahl al-Haq, perhaps the most experienced group, as well as Badr Corps, which is led by Hadi al-Ameri, the transportation minister, and a militia linked to the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who was one of the United States' most implacable foes during the long American occupation. All those groups are supported by Iran.
Many officials on Sunday said it was Asaib, a militia that was a particularly fierce enemy of the United States as it was winding down its military role in Iraq in 2011, that has taken on the most prominent role in the fighting for Amirli, in Salahuddin province.
"I would like to thank the jihadists from Asaib Ahl al-Haq, as they are sacrificing their lives to save Amirli," said Mahdi Taqi, a member of the regional council in Salahuddin province.
Taqi said Amirli, whose residents chose to defend their city against the Islamic State rather than flee as residents of other communities did in the face of the onslaught, had been partly liberated from the east side.
Other fighters were advancing toward Amirli from the north.
Karrar Ibrahim al-Asadi, an Asaib fighter in Sulaiman Bek, a village to the north of Amirli where the Islamic State has been in control, said in an interview: "I have been here for 15 days. Today, we have destroyed 40 armed vehicles and an entire convoy of ISIS. We will eliminate them all in the next few hours in Sulaiman Bek and once we do, only 8 kilometers remain until we enter Amirli. I can see their black flag from here."
Information for this article was contributed by Tim Arango, Ali Hamza and staff members of The New York Times; by Sameer N. Yacoub, Sinan Salaheddin, Frank Jordans and Rod McGuirk of The Associated Press; and by Khalid Al-Ansary, Aziz Alwan, Jason Scott and Zainab Fattah of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 09/01/2014