Abu Murtada al-Moussawi answered the call last summer from Iraq’s top Shiite cleric to help save the country from the Islamic State group, but after less than three months on the front lines he and several friends returned home because they had run out of food.

Militants from the Islamic State group blocked all mobile phone networks in the largest Iraqi city they control, Mosul, accusing informants in the city of tipping off coalition forces to their whereabouts, residents told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Iraqi soldiers backed by Sunni fighters launched a major operation Saturday to retake a section of the city of Ramadi seized by Islamic State group militants, an official and residents said.

Islamic State group extremists lined up and shot dead at least 50 Iraqi tribesmen, women and children Sunday, officials said, the latest mass slaying by militants who have killed some 150 members of the tribe in recent days.

Islamic State group extremists lined up and shot dead at least 50 tribesmen and women in Iraq’s Anbar province, officials said Saturday, the latest mass killing committed by the group.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani says Iran will stand by its neighbor Iraq in its fight against the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State group.

Iraqi authorities have executed at least 60 people so far in 2014, a United Nations report said Sunday, expressing concern that “irreversible miscarriages of justice” were taking place in some death penalty cases.

Iraqi Shiite militias have abducted and killed scores of Sunni civilians with the tacit support of the government in retaliation for Islamic State group attacks, Amnesty International said Tuesday.

A triple suicide bombing Sunday killed at least 58 people in Iraq as a roadside bomb killed the police chief of the western Anbar province, authorities said, attacks that dealt major blows to Iraqi security forces struggling to combat the Islamic State extremist group.

A series of car bomb attacks in Iraq’s capital killed 38 people in Shiite areas Saturday, authorities said, after Islamic militants killed a journalist working for a local television network in a Sunni province.