Los Angeles: Three more women alleged they were assaulted by Bill Cosby, including one who said the former US comedy icon forced her to perform oral sex.

The women — actresses Eden Tirl and Linda Ridgeway Whitedeer and ex-flight attendant Colleen Hughes — addressed the media in Los Angeles.

They join more than 40 others who claim abuse by the pioneering African-American comedian who played a beloved family doctor on the hit 1980s sitcom ‘The Cosby Show.’

Whitedeer said she met Cosby in 1971 during a job interview.

‘His attack was fast with surgical precision and surprise on his side,’ she said, adding that Cosby forced her to perform oral sex.

Tirl, meanwhile, said she suffered abuse during filming of ‘The Cosby Show.’

Hughes said she met Cosby while on a flight to Los Angeles. He subsequently took her to lunch at a hotel in Beverly Hills, she said, and then invited her to have champagne in a room.

Waking up hours later, she said she realised that she had been sexually assaulted.

‘I lived my whole life with a terrible secret about what Bill Cosby did to me,’ she said. ‘I never told anyone.’

Attorney Gloria Allred, who represents the three women and other alleged victims, attended Wednesday’s news conference.

In a small victory for the lawyer, a Los Angeles Supreme Court judge recently ordered the 78-year-old actor to testify under oath on 9 October in response to accusations from a woman who said he drugged and sexually abused her when she was a minor.

Cosby has been swept up in a flood of accusations of sexual abuse spanning four decades from dozens of women.

Last month, 35 of the women were united on the cover of New York magazine to tell startlingly similar stories of abuse.

They included models, waitresses, Playboy bunnies and women who used to work in show business. One said he raped her while she was grief stricken over the recent death of her six-year-old son.