Iraqi army says Tikrit next target after Baiji

The Iraqi army's next target is to isolate militants holding the city of Tikrit, after having broken the Islamic State group's hold on Baiji and its refinery, a senior officer said Monday.

"Over the next three days, we will work on reinforcing our capacity because we are planning to clear areas on three sides of Tikrit," an army brigadier general said.

Tikrit, the hometown of executed former president Saddam Hussein, is the second largest Iraqi city under IS control.

The town of Baiji lies north of Tikrit along the Tigris River and the brigadier general said Iraqi forces would also close in on the key city from Samarra to the south and from eastern regions.

Under the government of former prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, government forces tried, and failed, multiple times to retake Tikrit.

The government of Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi scored one of its most significant victories last week when its forces recaptured Baiji.

It is the largest town to have been retaken since the federal government lost swathes of the country to a militant offensive that began in June.

Iraqi forces also broke a months-long siege on the nearby Baiji oil refinery, the country's largest, and joined up with elite troops who had been holding off IS onslaughts for months.

The US central command issued a statement Monday saying that five of the 20 air strikes carried out by the US-led coalition over the past three days were in the Baiji area.

"They struck two tactical ISIL units and one large ISIL unit and destroyed one ISIL tank, one ISIL vehicle, and four ISIL fighting positions," it said, using another acronym for IS.

The brigadier general in the Salaheddin operations command said the army was now fully in control of Baiji.

"It's firmly in our grip but it doesn't mean that IS will not carry out attacks here and there," he said.

Other security sources said some IS fighters remained in the vicinity of the refinery.

IS claims Baghdad bomb attack on UN convoy

Meanwhile, IS on Monday claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb attack against a UN convoy near Baghdad airport.

"Our brother Abu Muawiya al-Falluji rammed a convoy for the 'United Nations waging war against Muslims' surrounded by heavy US protection," the group said in a statement.

The name given for the suicide attacker suggests he was an Iraqi from the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, which lies around 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Baghdad.

In its statement, IS claimed Sunday's attack had left many dead and alleged the Iraqi government had taken away the bodies of US personnel.

"The convoy was strictly a UN convoy, there was nobody who isn't UN staff," a press officer for the UN mission in Iraq said.

The world body's top envoy in Iraq said on Sunday that no UN staff member was wounded in the blast.

A police officer said three people were injured.

The UN press officer said the attack was the first in a long time against the United Nations, which pulled out of Iraq for several years after a devastating bombing against its Baghdad headquarters in August 2003.