Dozens of civilians were killed in west of Mosul were Iraqi forces are battling Daesh insurgents, local officials said on Saturday.

Both Iraqi aircraft and a U.S-led international coalition are bombing Daesh in the Mosul area, AFP reported.

"There are dozens of bodies still under the rubble," Bashar al-Kiki, the head of the Nineveh provincial council, told AFP.

Nawfal Hammadi, the governor of Nineveh, of which Mosul is the capital, said the coalition had carried out the strikes in the city's Mosul al-Jadida area, killing "more than 130 civilians."

"The Daesh terrorist organisation is seeking to stop the advance of the Iraqi forces in Mosul at any cost, and it is gathering civilians... and using them as human shields," Hammadi told AFP.

Other officials said that hundreds of people had died in the strikes. It was not possible to independently confirm the tolls.