Seventeen people were killed and 51 wounded a fresh onslaught overnight by United States and Iraqi forces on the town of Tall Afar in northern Iraq, a hospital official said on Thursday.
The bombardments began at 2am (10pm GMT on Wednesday) and continued for seven hours, an AFP correspondent said. Clashes also erupted between coalition forces and insurgents in two neighbourhoods of the town, located about 450km north of Baghdad.
Several bodies littered the streets and could not be removed because of the bombardments.
On September 4, 13 Iraqis were killed and 53 wounded as US forces backed by a contingent from the Iraqi national guard battled for six hours with insurgents in Tall Afar.
US and Iraqi forces around Tall Afar in recent weeks ”were repeatedly attacked by a large terrorist element that has displaced local Iraqi security forces,” the US military said on Thursday.
”Today, multinational forces and Iraqi security forces initiated operations to eliminate this threat and to restore control of Tall Afar to legitimate Iraqi government officials,” it said in a statement.
Last week the US military charged that Tall Afar was a ”suspected haven for terrorists crossing into Iraq from Syria”. – Sapa-AFP