According to a Sunday report in the Arabic language daily Sabq, the killed Takfiri insurgents were brothers, named Yahya and Ebrahim.

On Thursday, heavily armed insurgents from the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) entered the holy city from multiple directions. They used bulldozers to destroy a number of holy Shia shrines there, but faced counterattacks from the Iraqi army.

The father of the two Saudi terrorists said in an interview with the Saudi news website and daily newspaper that he received an overseas phone call informing him of the deaths of his sons.

The father further boasted that his sons had earlier travelled to Syria to fight against the government of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad before moving on to Iraq.

Iraq's elite counter-terrorism forces backed by helicopters launched a massive operation later on Thursday and drove the foreign-backed terrorists out of Samarra.

"We were able to kill 80 (militants) in strikes and attacks and clashes, from house to house and one street to another," AFP quoted Staff Lieutenant General Sabah al-Fatlawi as saying on Thursday night.

Iraq is currently witnessing a wave of violence unprecedented in recent years.

Takfiri groups, including the so-called ISIL, are reportedly intruding into Iraq from neighboring Syria and Saudi Arabia to undermine security in the country.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said Saudi Arabia and Qatar are responsible for the security crisis and growing terrorism in his country, denouncing the Al Saud regime as a major supporter of global terrorism.

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