US-led air strikes 'hit Islamic State leaders in Iraq' Mourners chant anti-Islamic State slogans during the funeral procession for a police officer in Baghdad on Saturday. Photo: Karim Kadim Baghdad: United States commanders have refused to confirm that air strikes targeting leaders of the so-called Islamic State in an Iraqi town near the Syrian border might have hit the group's top commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The satellite news channel al-Hadath, part of Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television, made the claim that Baghdadi was among those targeted. Two witnesses told Reuters an air strike targeted a house where senior IS officers were meeting, near the western Iraqi border town of al-Qaim. They said IS fighters had cleared a hospital so that their wounded could be treated. IS fighters used loudspeakers to urge residents to donate blood, the witnesses said. A man cleans his shop near the site of a suspected Islamic State car bomb in Baghdad's Al-Amil district on Saturday. Photo: Ahmed Malik Residents said there were unconfirmed reports that IS's local leader in the western Iraqi province of Anbar and his deputy were killed. US Central Command confirmed that coalition aircraft conducted a "series of air strikes" against "a gathering of [IS] leaders near Mosul." A convoy of 10 armoured vehicles from the group was destroyed. "We cannot confirm if [IS] leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was among those present," CENTCOM spokesman Patrick Ryder said. Al-Hadath said dozens of people were killed and wounded in the strike on al-Qaim, and that Baghdadi's fate was unclear. Al-Qaim and the neighbouring Syrian town of al-Bukamal are on a strategic supply route linking territory held by IS in Iraq and Syria. Bombings continue The hardline Sunni IS's drive to form a caliphate in the two countries has helped return sectarian violence to the dark days of 2006-2007, the peak of Iraq's civil war. On Saturday night a car bomb killed eight people in Baghdad's mostly Shiite Sadr City, police and hospital sources said, bringing to 28 the day's toll from bombs in the Iraqi capital and the western city of Ramadi. Two bombs exploded in separate attacks in Baghdad's mainly Shiite Amil district, said a police source. A driver parked his car and went to a cigarette stall, then he disappeared. Then his car blew up, killing passers-by," the source said, describing one of the two attacks in Amil. In the mostly Shiite al-Amin area of Baghdad, another car bomb killed eight people, medical sources said. The attack by a suicide bomber on a checkpoint in Ramadi in Anbar killed five soldiers. Before the explosion, the checkpoint was targeted with several mortar rounds. Then the suicide humvee bomber attacked it," said a police official. Some troops came to the scene. They were attacked by mortars. A confrontation took place for one hour. There was no claim of responsibility for the bombings, but they resembled operations carried out by Islamic militants. In the town of Baquba, 65 kilometres north-east of Baghdad, a gunman killed a Shiite militiaman, and a car bomb targeting a police officer killed his 10-year-old son, security sources said. US troops deployed to Iraq Western and Iraqi officials say US-led air strikes are not enough to defeat the al-Qaeda offshoot and Iraq must improve the performance of its security forces to eliminate the threat from the group, which wants to redraw the map of the Middle East. Sunni Muslim tribesmen, Shiite militia fighters and Iraqi security forces set out on Saturday to recapture a key city in Anbar province and stop IS atrocities against a local tribe in an extraordinary coalition that could serve as a model for future cooperation against the militants. The operation to liberate Hit, about 145 kilometres west of Baghdad, "is a dramatic change," said Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi defence analyst. Accepting offers of assistance from the Shiite militias, notorious for anti-Sunni atrocities, is a measure of Sunni tribal leaders' desperation to stop the slaughter of their people by IS in retribution for the tribes' stiff, months-long defence of Hit, which capitulated in October. Sunni tribal leaders have been outspoken in their anger at the army for failing to prevent the fall of Hit and the atrocities against their people, and demanded arms. The Shiite-dominated government resisted, but Washington made clear that it wouldn't send military advisers to Anbar unless the government armed the tribes. The province's Sunnis are deeply alienated from Baghdad's Shiite-dominated government. Former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite who resigned under US pressure in August to make way for the current prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, reneged on a pledge to incorporate into the security forces Sunni fighters who joined forces with US occupation troops against Islamic State's predecessor, al-Qaeda in Iraq, in 2006 and 2007. Mr Maliki also used force to break up protests by Sunni Anbaris over policies that they decried as discriminatory, igniting a rebellion that IS hijacked late last year.