MOSUL/DIYALA, Iraq
U.S. and peshmerga operations have killed 37 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants on Sunday in Iraq's city of Mosul.
Airstrikes of the U.S.-led coalition forces killed 29 militants and eight others were killed by the peshmerga operations, leaving 14 injured, peshmerga commander of the eastern side of the Tigris river, Zaim Ali told AA.
The injured were taken to the Mosul state hospital, he added.
Ali stated that the heavy clashes began after Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, militants attacked the peshmerga emplacements in Mosul's Zumar region.
ISIL was attempting to capture the Mosul dam, Ali claimed, saying the group had failed as peshmerga forces were making progress on all of its regional fronts.
Formerly, the Iraqi Defense Ministry had announced that they had started an extensive operation against ISIL militants in the eastern Diyala governorate of Iraq, where 17 villages surrounding the strategically important Al-Adheim Dam in the region were still under ISIL's control.
Meanwhile, 150 militants - whose majority had foreign ID cards on them - were killed in operations in the last two days, in the Baiji district in Saladin province, according to the Ministry.
The Iraqi army was not able to enter several houses in the district of Baiji because they were loaded with explosives, said the Ministry.
Since the middle of June, the Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga forces are pitted against ISIL militants, who have taken control of large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.
The U.S. is leading an international coalition, which includes France, Germany, and Saudi Arabia, and has carried out numerous airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria.
www.aa.com.tr/en
