CNN, Iraq :
Iraqi security forces retook the city of Tikrit on Saturday, a local tribal leader and state media said, as they went on the offensive against the Sunni extremist militants who have seized swaths of northern and western Iraq.
Sheikh Khamis al-Joubouri, a key tribal leader in Tikrit, told CNN that the Iraqi security forces entered the city supported by special forces and fighters from among the local tribes, and had gained control.
He said that fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) retreated in the direction of Kirkuk and Nineveh provinces.
However, amid claim and counter-claim, a combatant told a CNN freelance reporter that ISIS fighters remained in control of Tikrit, but that there are fierce clashes in an area about 20 kilometers from the city center, toward Samarra.
State-run Iraqiya TV reported that the Iraqi army and volunteer militia groups had cleared ISIS fighters from what was former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s hometown.
The Iraqi army forces, equipped with tanks and backed up by the Iraqi air force, advanced on the city from four directions, the station said, citing the Salaheddin Military Command.
Sabah Numan, a Counter Terrorism Unit spokesman, told the station that 120 militants
had been killed and 20 vehicles destroyed in a large scale operation that began Saturday morning.
“We are mainly busy defusing booby-trapped houses and cars on the main roads leading into Tikrit,” he said.
CNN cannot independently confirm the reports. Al-Joubouri said that the tribes were not aligned with the government or with ISIS and had stayed out of the fight until now.
But, he said, when ISIS fighters who arrived in Tikrit robbed banks and carried out executions, as well as bringing the local economy to a standstill, the tribal leaders offered their help to the Iraqi security forces poised outside the city.
The tribal leaders shared their knowledge of the city, including routes and known ISIS positions, he said.
On Friday, Human Rights Watch reported that two mass graves believed to contain the bodies of Iraqi soldiers, police and civilians killed by ISIS and their militant allies had been discovered in Tikrit.
Iraq’s air force also targeted locations held by in the northern city of Mosul with airstrikes Saturday morning, a senior Iraqi military official told CNN.
The official, who could not be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said the strikes were carried out by Iraqi jet fighters firing Hellfire missiles.
Seven civilians were killed in Mosul’s Bashtabia neighborhood and two were injured, according to Dr. Salaheldin Al-Naimi, general director of the Health Directorate of Nineveh province.
Iraq’s military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta, told a news briefing Saturday that Iraq’s forces had regained the upper hand against ISIS and were now being supported by the tribes.
“We are advancing in all our fights,” he said. Atta said that a total of 125 ISIS fighters had been killed across Iraq in multiple operations, with 57 vehicles destroyed and 96 attack sorties flown by the air force.
In one setback for the military, seven Iraqi soldiers were killed and 29 others were wounded on Saturday in clashes between Iraqi security forces and ISIS at a military base in the town of Jurf al-Sakhar, about 85 kilometers (53 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraqi security officials said.
ISIS has taken over swaths of northern and western Iraq in its quest to create an Islamic state stretching from Syria to Iraq. And the crisis has embroiled countries around the world.
Armed US drones have started flying over Baghdad to provide additional protection for 180 US military advisers in the area, a US official told CNN on Friday.
But using the drones for any offensive strikes against ISIS would require approval from US President Barack Obama. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, in a speech during a visit Friday to the Baghdad Operations Command, insisted the capital was not in danger.
“We have an army to respond to the catastrophe that has occurred, and Baghdad is safe and cannot be exposed to instability,” he said, according to a statement released by his office.
