Islamic State militants kill 10 Iraqi soldiers in Anbar ambush

Islamic State militants killed at least 10 soldiers in the western Iraqi province of Anbar on Tuesday in their latest deadly attack on security forces in the area, officers said.

The latest attack near the remote outpost of Rutba brought the death toll of Iraqi security forces killed by the Islamic State group to at least 26 in the area in recent days. 

"We had 10 soldiers killed and six wounded in an attack by Daesh early this morning," an army lieutenant colonel told the AFP news agency, using an Arabic term for IS.

A police officer and a local official confirmed the attack and casualty toll.

The army officer said IS attacked a 1st Division base in the Saggar area, east of Rutba, using mortar rounds and rockets before fighters armed with rifles tried to storm it.

He said the ensuing clashes lasted two hours until 7am.

Rutba lies about 390km west of Baghdad in the vast province of Anbar and is the last sizeable town before the border with Jordan.

Anbar is a sprawling desert province traversed by the Euphrates River and borders Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

It has long been an insurgent stronghold and IS already controlled parts of it when it swept through Iraq in 2014 to take over around a third of the country.

Pro-government forces have since retaken most towns and cities in Anbar, but IS militants still control some areas near the Syrian border and have desert hideouts from which they harass federal forces.

According to an Iraqi spokesman, the Islamic State group now controls less than seven percent of territory in Iraq.

Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes and other support continue to battle IS inside the second city of Mosul, after retaking much of the other territory the militants had seized.

"Daesh controlled 40 percent of Iraqi land," in 2014, Brigadier General Yahya Rasool told reporters, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

"As of March 31 [this year], they only held 6.8 percent of Iraqi territory," said Rasool, the spokesman of the Joint Operations Command coordinating the anti-militant effort.