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 The offensive, the largest yet against insurgents who swept
through northern Iraq in June, has been stalled for four days after
Iraqi security forces and mainly Shi'ite militia pushed into Tikrit
last week.
They have struggled to gain further ground against the militants who
are holed up in a vast complex of palaces built when Saddam was in
power.
Military officials in Tikrit said there was no fighting on Monday in
the city that was home to more than 250,000 people before it was
overrun last year.
Government forces are in control of most of the northern Qadisiya
district as well as the southern and western outskirts of the city,
trapping the militants in an area bounded by the river that runs
through Tikrit. Though Iraqi forces and allied militiamen may have
the insurgents in a chokehold, officials are increasingly citing air
power as necessary to drive out the remaining insurgents.
"We need air support from any force that can work with us against
IS," Deputy Minister of Defence Ibrahim al-Lami told Reuters,
declining to say whether he meant from the U.S.-led coalition or
Iran, which is playing a role in the assault.
 The U.S.-led coalition has been conspicuously absent from the
offensive, the biggest to be undertaken by Iraqi forces since
Islamic State seized around a third of the country last summer
including Tikrit.
Interior Minister Mohammed al-Ghaban said authorities had put a
temporary halt to the offensive in Tikrit, capital of the mainly
Sunni Muslim Salahuddin province.
"We have decided to halt military operations in Salahuddin in order
to reduce casualties among our heroic forces... and to preserve the
remaining infrastructure," the minister said at a news conference in
the city of Samarra, 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad.
"The situation is under control and we will choose the appropriate
time to attack the enemy and liberate the area".
KURDISH ADVANCE
More than 20,000 troops and Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia are
taking part in the operation, which began two weeks ago, supported
by a relatively small contingent of Sunni fighters from Tikrit and
the surrounding Salahuddin province.
The assault is seen as a litmus test for any future attempt to
retake the large northern city of Mosul, which is likely to be a far
more complex operation.
Meanwhile, coalition air strikes helped Kurdish forces seize the
villages of Wahda, Saada, and Khalid from Islamic State in the north
- part of a broader week-long offensive to drive the militants away
from the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
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Shi’ite Turkmen fighters also clashed for a fourth day with Islamic
State insurgents near the village of Bashir, south of Kirkuk.
In Baghdad, Special U.S. presidential envoy General John Allen
addressed a meeting of Iraqi and foreign officials aimed at kicking
off efforts to stabilize and rebuild territories retaken from
Islamic State.
The militants have been driven back by Kurdish peshmerga forces in
the north, and Shi'ite militia known as Hashid Shaabi (Popular
Mobilisation) in the eastern province of Diyala, the Baghdad belt
and north of the capital.
Allen said Iraqis were beginning to recover from life under Islamic
State in Diyala and "hopefully soon" in Tikrit, but that local
governance would prove difficult because many officials had been
killed, were in exile, or co-operated with Islamic State.
The Prime Minister's spokesman Rafid al-Jaboori echoed calls for
more air strikes: "We have been saying we need more air support for
all operations," he told Reuters. "We welcome air support for all
our campaigns against IS".
Asked by Reuters for his response to the Iraqi appeals, Allen said
it would not be appropriate for him to comment.
(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Saif Hameed in Baghdad,
Mustafa Mahmoud in Kirkuk; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by
Dominic Evans)
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