KIRKUK, Iraq — Gunmen in northern Iraq where remnants
of Daesh are active blew up a vehicle carrying policeman before opening fire
killing nine, police sources said Sunday.
اضافة اعلان
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack,
one of the deadliest in Iraq in recent months.
The bomb blast in the Kirkuk area hit a vehicle transporting
members of Iraq’s federal police.
It was followed by “a direct attack with small arms” near
the village of Shalal Al-Matar, a federal police officer told AFP on condition
of anonymity, attributing the assault to Daesh.
“An assailant has been killed and we are looking for the
others,” the officer said.
Two policemen initially reported as being wounded later died,
bringing the total killed to nine.
Daesh terrorists seized large swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territory in 2014, declaring a “caliphate” where they ruled with brutality
before their defeat in late 2017 by Iraqi forces backed by a US-led military
coalition.
Daesh lost its last Syrian bastion, near the Iraqi border,
in 2019.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani condemned the
violence as a “cowardly terrorist attack”.
Security forces should show “vigilance, carefully inspect
the roads and not provide any opportunity for terrorist elements”, he said.
Sleeper cells
The US-led anti-Daesh coalition continued a combat role in
Iraq until December last year, but roughly 2,500 American soldiers remain in
the country to assist in the fight against the extremists.
Daesh cells, however, remain active in several areas of
Iraq.
On Wednesday, three Iraqi soldiers were killed and three
others injured when a bomb exploded as their patrol vehicle passed through
farmland in Tarmiya, a rural municipality located about 30km north of the
capital Baghdad.
There was no immediate claim for the bombing in a known
hotspot of Daesh sleeper cells.
Last month a machine gun attack on a remote northern Iraqi
military post killed four soldiers near Kirkuk, a military source said. There
was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Iraqi security forces continue to carry out
counter-terrorism operations against the group, and the deaths of Daesh
fighters in airstrikes and raids are regularly announced.
The UN estimates Daesh maintains between 6,000 and 10,000
fighters inside Iraq and Syria, exploiting the porous border between the two
countries and concentrating mainly in rural areas.
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