ISIS claims duty for a lethal assault on the Iraqi police
Islamic State militants stated Sunday they carried out an assault in northern Iraq that killed 9 cops, detonating a roadside bomb in entrance of survivors with machine gun hearth.
The assault within the Kirkuk area – which police stated killed 9 federal officers – is without doubt one of the deadliest assaults in Iraq in latest months.
The group stated in a press release on the Telegram messaging app that ISIS fighters attacked “a police patrol … detonated an explosive machine, then attacked it with machine weapons and grenades.”
An officer within the Federal Police, who requested to not be named, advised AFP that the explosion hit a automotive carrying members of the Iraqi Federal Police close to the village of Shalal al-Matar.
The officer added that the assault was adopted by a “direct assault with gentle weapons.”
“An attacker was killed and we’re looking for the others,” the officer stated.
Islamic State militants seized swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territory in 2014, declaring a “caliphate” as they dominated brutally earlier than being defeated in late 2017 by Iraqi forces backed by a US-led navy coalition.
ISIS misplaced its final stronghold in Syria close to the Iraqi border in 2019.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani condemned the violence, calling it a “cowardly terrorist assault”.
He pressured the necessity for the safety forces to stick to “vigilance and thorough inspection of roads, and to not present any alternative for terrorist parts.”
Sleeper cells: The US-led anti-IS coalition continued its fight function in Iraq till December of final yr, however roughly 2,500 US troops remained within the nation to assist battle the jihadists.
Nevertheless, ISIS cells are nonetheless energetic in a number of areas of Iraq.
Three Iraqi troopers had been killed and three others wounded, Wednesday, by a bomb as their automotive patrol drove by way of farmland in Tarmiya, a rural municipality about 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of the capital Baghdad that’s recognized to be a hotspot for Islamic State sleeper cells. .
A navy supply stated {that a} machine gun assault final month on a distant military outpost in northern Iraq killed 4 troopers close to Kirkuk. Nobody instantly claimed duty.
Iraqi safety forces proceed to hold out counter-terrorism operations in opposition to the group, and the deaths of ISIS fighters in airstrikes and raids are repeatedly introduced.
Regardless of the setbacks, which have left ISIS within the shadow of its former self, the group has “maintained its means to conduct assaults at a gentle tempo,” stated a January report by the United Nations.
The United Nations estimates that the jihadist group maintains between 6,000 and 10,000 fighters inside Iraq and Syria, exploiting the porous borders between the 2 international locations and concentrating primarily in rural areas.
(AFP)
