Three Iraqi soldiers, including two officers, were killed and four others wounded in a night attack in northern Iraq on Sunday, a military source told AFP.
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The attack was carried out with automatic weapons by “members”. [du groupe] “Islamic State” happened around 4:00 a.m. (01:00 GMT), said the official, who asked to remain anonymous. It wasn’t immediately claimed.
“Three soldiers, including two officers, were killed and four other soldiers injured in the attack on their barracks in Wadi al-Naft,” some 25 km west of the city of Kirkuk, an extraction area, this senior officer reported.
The stretch of attack between Kirkuk, a federally controlled city, and the autonomous region of Kurdistan in Iraq is part of these border areas disputed between the two entities.
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.