An Iraqi army soldier was killed and an officer injured in a raid on the Islamic State (IS) group in northern Iraq, which also killed three jihadist ranks, the authorities said.
The operation was carried out on Sunday in the Kirkuk region, a large city north of Baghdad, according to a press release published on Sunday evening by the media cell of the Iraqi security forces.
The Iraqi forces have thus “discovered three elements of the terrorist group Daesh (Arabic acronym for IS, editor’s note) in the Turkelan sector in Kirkuk province,” the source said.
“Based on this information, a detachment (…) of the Iraqi army went to the scene and fought against these elements,” the text continues. The jihadists “were surrounded and killed, the explosive belts they were wearing detonated”.
The statement also reports the death of a soldier in these clashes, in which an officer was injured.
After a meteoric rise in power in 2014 and the seizure of vast territories in Iraq and neighboring Syria, IS has seen its self-proclaimed “caliphate” collapse under the impact of successive offensives in those two countries.
Iraqi authorities declared their “victory” against ISIS in late 2017, but jihadist cells continue to sporadically attack army and police personnel, particularly in rural and remote areas north of Baghdad.
In late April, the international anti-jihadist coalition reported a sharp drop in these attacks in both Iraq and neighboring Syria in the early months of 2023.
This year, the fasting month of Ramadan has been “one of the most peaceful in years,” said coalition commander Gen. Matthew McFarlane, noting that attacks in Iraq were down “80%” compared to 2022.
In March, a senior Iraqi military official asserted that ISIS had between 400 and 500 active fighters in his country.