Iraqi security forces recaptured the al-Houz bridge over the Euphrates river after fierce clashes with ISIS militants in western Ramadi.

Police colonel Mahdi Abbassaid that the bridge was controlled by ISIS for several months and served as a primary supply route for the insurgents.

Anbar Province was a center of the al Qaeda insurgency after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In recent days Iraqi soldiers and police have been able to secure the center of Ramadi and push the militants back from some areas of the city.

Meanwhile, Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, on Friday urged the country's politicians to end all disputes in order to confront the political, economic and security challenges facing the country.

"It is important that the brothers (the politicians) should come out with final and drastic solutions for the problems," said Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani's representative during a Friday sermon in the holy Shiite city of Karbala.

Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani's comments came as the Iraqi security forces, backed by Shiite militias, are struggling to regain control of territory lost to ISIS during a offensive last year.

In Friday's violence, police officials said a bomb exploded near an outdoor market in the Sunni town of Tarmiyiah, north of Baghdad, killing four people and wounding eight.

A bomb near a courthouse killed three people and wounded nine in the town of Mahmoudiyah, south of Baghdad.