An Iraqi official says Islamic State militants lined up 30 Sunni men in a town west of Baghdad and shot them dead.

The slayings took place on a main street in the town of Hit on Wednesday.

Anbar provincial council chairman, Sabah Karhout, says the Sunnis killed were tribal fighters allied with the government and members of the security forces captured when the IS group overran the town, located about 140 kilometers (85 miles) west of the Iraqi capital.

Hit fell to the Islamic State group in early October after fierce clashes with government forces backed by the Sunni fighters from the Albu Nimir tribe.

The IS militants have seized large swaths of land in western and northern Iraq in the country’s worst crisis since the 2011 U.S. troop withdrawal.

(AP)