More than 54 people were killed in bomb attacks and clashes with Islamic State (IS) militant group across Iraq on Friday, security sources said.

In Iraq's northern central province of Salahudin, the security forces backed by Shiite militias and aircraft seized towns of Mkeshifa and al-Mu'tasim in north and south of the city of Samarra respectively after two days of fierce clashes with the IS militants, leaving more than 30 militants killed, a provincial security source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

A militia commander and three of his men were killed when in a huge blast of a booby-trapped house in Mkeshifa, said the same source.

Iraqi warplanes and gunships intensified air strikes against the positions of IS militants and their vehicles near Mkeshifa and the surrounding villages, killing undetermined number of them, the source said.

On Wednesday, IS militants seized part of the town of Mkeshifa, also named Dijla, after multiple attacks by suicide tanker truck bombing, mortar barrage and gunfire by dozens of IS militants, forcing the troops to withdraw from the bases and take positions on the main road and in the southern part of the town.

Salahudin is a predominantly Sunni province and its capital Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, is the hometown of former President Saddam Hussein.

In Anbar province, the main hospital in the provincial capital city of Ramadi, some 110 km west of Baghdad, received the bodies of 15 people from one family, an unnamed provincial security source told Xinhua.

They were killed when their house, just west of Ramadi, was destroyed by exchange of bombardment during heavy clashes between the security forces and IS militants who seize part of the area, the source said.

Also in the province, IS militants captured several villages between the towns of Heet, about 160 km west of Baghdad, and the nearby al-Baghdadi after clashes with the security forces and allied Sunni militias, the source said.

In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, at least three civilians were killed and ten others wounded when seven mortar rounds landed on a popular market in the town of Maqdadiyah, some 100 km northeast of Baghdad, a provincial security source told Xinhua.

Separately, two IS militants were killed when a helicopter gunship opened fire on their vehicle carrying heavy machine gun near the village of Hunbus outside Maqdadiyah, the source said.

The security situation in Iraq has begun to drastically deteriorate since June 10, when bloody clashes broke out between the Iraqi security forces and the IS group, an al-Qaida offshoot, which took control of the country's northern province of Nineveh and later seized swathes of territories after Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts in other Sunni provinces.

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