Coalition airstrikes hit an "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) workshop in the town of Anah Wednesday night (September 20th), killing 16 of the group's elements, the Anbar Operations Command said Thursday.

"The international coalition has targeted and fully destroyed a workshop for rigging vehicles with explosives and making improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in western Anah, killing six terrorists that were holed up inside it," command spokesman Col. Mohammed al-Dulaimi told Diyaruna.

The airstrikes also struck a group of ISIS gunmen and a locally-made rocket launcher that was threatening the nearby Iraqi security forces, he said, adding that 10 of the group's fighters were killed in the attack and their weapons and vehicles destroyed.

Anah, about 100 kilometres east of the border with Syria, is one of three towns in Anbar province still under ISIS control.

On Tuesday, Iraqi forces launched an assault to retake the town and its surrounding areas from ISIS.

But mines and other ordnance buried by extremists are slowing the Iraqi forces' advance, AFP reported Wednesday.

"We are just a few hundred metres from (the town of) Anah but our biggest obstacle are mines and explosive devices planted by ISIS," Col. Ahmad al-Dulaimi told an AFP reporter at the scene.

Black smoke billowed over the town from barrels of oil set ablaze by ISIS fighters to obscure the skies for coalition warplanes and Iraqi helicopters supporting the Iraqi advance, amid intermittent automatic weapons fire.