BAGHDAD — Iraqi forces launched a fresh assault Saturday against Sunni militants in the north-central city of Tikrit, where a human rights group said the militants executed at least 160 people two weeks ago.
Iraqi state television claimed Saturday afternoon that the mission, which included an airlift of forces by helicopter, had succeeded in clearing the city of militants.
Helicopter gunships carried out airstrikes on a university campus in Tikrit, about 90 miles north of Baghdad, the Associated Press reported.
Fighters allied with the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) captured the city earlier this month.
Jawad al-Bolani, a security official in Salahuddin province, where Tikrit is located, told the AP on Saturday that the operation was ongoing.
However, a tribal leader from Tikrit, a Sunni stronghold and the home town of ousted president Saddam Hussein, said that ISIS was still in control.
The tribal leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said that Iraqi army forces controlled the university and the al-Sahra airfield, formerly Camp Speicher, but that most of the town remained in the hands of militants.
Iraqi forces first entered the city on Thursday, when special forces were dropped onto the university campus from four helicopters, he said, speaking by phone. One helicopter was shot down and another had to make an emergency landing after suffering a mechanical failure, he said, with a Lebanese pilot and several Iraqis taken hostage by ISIS. He said soldiers had left their base to look for the downed helicopter and its crew but had to turn back after clashes.
The city has suffered heavy airstrikes for three days, residents said. The tribal leader and a resident who also spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons said some of the strikes included barrel bombs — explosives-packed drums that are notorious for causing high numbers of civilian casualties due to their inaccuracy.
“The choppers were hitting places while they were directly above them. People have seen them fall,” he said, referring to the possible barrel bombs. “When they fire missiles, they are projectiles. They fire from farther away.”
It is not the first time Iraqi forces have been accused of dropping the makeshift munitions, a well-known tactic of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as he battles rebels across the border. New York-based Human Rights Watch last month accused the Iraqi government of using barrel bombs in the city of Fallujah.
An Iraqi government official said last week that the armed forces had run out of U.S. supplied Hellfire missiles, their main source of air power against insurgents.
Human Rights Watch said Friday that its analysis of recent satellite imagery appeared to indicate the mass execution of between 160 and 190 men in Tikrit between June 11 and June 14.
During that period, ISIS claimed to have executed 1,700 Shiite members of Iraq’s military, a number that has not been independently verified because of lack of access to ISIS-controlled areas, Iraqi officials and rights groups say.
“The number of victims may well be much higher, but the difficulty of locating bodies and accessing the area has prevented a full investigation,” the New York-based rights group said in a statement specifically addressing the killings in Tikrit.
Thousands of Iraqi troops — from a military that has been trained and armed by the United States — were forced into a humiliating retreat last month, their units melting away seemingly overnight as the jihadists advanced across the country, seizing territory and abandoned American weapons.
Frustrated with the pace of new U.S. jet and attack helicopter deliveries, the Iraqi government has resorted to negotiating the return of decades-old planes from Iran as it desperately tries to cobble together air power to turn the tide against the insurgents.
Iran has been “receptive” to the demands and is working on refurbishing an unspecified number of jets, Ammar Toma, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s defense and security committee, said Friday. Government and military officials and two other lawmakers confirmed the negotiations.
Hauslohner reported from Beirut.
Loveday Morris is a Beirut-based correspondent for The Post. She has previously covered the Middle East for The National, based in Abu Dhabi, and for the Independent, based in London and Beirut.
Abigail Hauslohner has been The Post’s Cairo bureau chief since 2012. She served previously as a Middle East correspondent for Time magazine, and she has covered the revolutions in Egypt and Libya.
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