Sunni tribal fighters carry their weapons as they stand guard against possible attacks from Islamic State militants in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, yesterday.

Iraqi security forces and militias fought their way into Saddam Hussein’s home city of Tikrit yesterday, advancing from the north and south in their biggest counter-offensive so far against Islamic State militants.

In a possible response to the fighting north of Baghdad, militants in the Islamic State stronghold of Anbar west of the capital launched 13 suicide car bomb attacks on army and security positions in the provincial capital of Ramadi.

Army and militia fighters captured part of Tikrit’s northern Qadisiya district, the provincial governor said, while in the south of the Tigris river city a security officer said another force made a rapid push towards the centre.

Islamic State fighters who stormed into Tikrit last June during a lightning offensive through northern and central Iraq have used the complex of palaces built in Tikrit under Saddam, the executed former president, as their headquarters.

More than 20,000 troops and Iranian-backed Shi’ite Muslim militias known as Hashid Shaabi, supported by local Sunni Muslim tribes, launched the offensive for Tikrit 10 days ago, advancing from the east and along the east bank of the Tigris.

On Tuesday they took the town of al-Alam on the northern edge of Tikrit, paving the way for an attack on the city itself.

Islamic State gradually losing ground in Iraq

“The governor of Salahuddin announces the purging of half of Qadisiya district, the largest of Tikrit’s neighbourhoods,” a statement from governor Raed al-Jubouri’s office said. The army and militia fighters raised the national flag above a military hospital in the section of Qadisiya they had retaken from the militants, officials said.

After pausing while helicopters attacked Islamic State snipers and positions, the ground forces were progressing steadily, taking “one street every 30 minutes”, the security official said. He said there was fierce fighting around Tikrit police headquarters just south of Qadisiya.

Sunni tribal fighters ride in a vehicle with their weapons as they guard against possible attacks from Islamic State militants, in Ramadi, yesterday. Photos: Reuters

To the northwest, troops and Hashid Shaabi fighters were clashing with Islamic State militants in the city’s industrial zone, he added.

If Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government retook Tikrit it would be the first city clawed back from the Sunni insurgents and would give it momentum in the next, pivotal stage of the campaign – recapturing Mosul, the largest city in the north.

Mosul is also the biggest city held by the ultra-radical Islamic State, who now rule a self-declared cross-border caliphate in Sunni regions of Syria and Iraq.

Over the past few months Islamic State has gradually lost ground in Iraq to the army, Shi’ite militias and Kurdish peshmerga forces, backed by air strikes carried out by a US-led coalition of mainly Western and allied Arab states.