{"id":183841,"date":"2022-12-19T01:43:53","date_gmt":"2022-12-18T22:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/?p=183841"},"modified":"2022-12-19T01:43:53","modified_gmt":"2022-12-18T22:43:53","slug":"islamic-state-group-claims-deadly-attack-on-iraq-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/islamic-state-group-claims-deadly-attack-on-iraq-police\/","title":{"rendered":"Islamic State Group Claims Deadly Attack On Iraq Police"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Islamic State group jihadists said Sunday they had carried out an attack in northern Iraq killing nine police officers, setting off a roadside bomb before machine-gunning survivors.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The attack in the Kirkuk area — which police said left nine federal officers dead — is one of the deadliest in Iraq in recent months.<\/p>\n

IS fighters attacked “a police patrol… detonated an explosive device then attacked them with machine guns and hand grenades,” the group said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.<\/p>\n

A federal police officer, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the bomb blast hit a vehicle transporting members of Iraq’s federal police near the village of Shalal al-Matar.<\/p>\n

It was then followed by “a direct attack with small arms”, the officer added.
\n“An assailant has been killed, and we are looking for the others,” the officer said.<\/p>\n

IS jihadists 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.<\/p>\n

IS lost its last Syrian bastion, near the Iraqi border, in 2019.<\/p>\n

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani condemned the violence as a “cowardly terrorist attack”.<\/p>\n

Security forces should show “vigilance, carefully inspect the roads and not provide any opportunity for terrorist elements”, he said.<\/p>\n

Sleeper cells
\nThe US-led anti-IS 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 jihadists.<\/p>\n

IS cells, however, remain active in several areas of Iraq.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, three Iraqi soldiers were killed and three others wounded when a bomb exploded as their patrol vehicle passed through farmland in Tarmiya, a rural municipality about 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of the capital Baghdad that is a known hotspot for IS sleeper cells.
\nLast 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.<\/p>\n

Iraqi security forces continue to carry out counter-terrorism operations against the group, and the deaths of IS fighters in airstrikes and raids are regularly announced.<\/p>\n

Despite the setbacks, which has left IS a shadow of its former self, the group has “maintained its ability to launch attacks at a steady pace”, a January report by the United Nations read.<\/p>\n

The UN estimates the jihadist organisation 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.<\/p>\n

(AFP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Islamic State group jihadists said Sunday they had carried out an attack in northern Iraq killing nine police officers, setting off a roadside bomb before machine-gunning survivors.   The attack in the Kirkuk area — which police said left nine federal officers dead — is one of the deadliest in Iraq in recent months. IS […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":183842,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10221280388112155_325455220908133":"","twitter_917774835383787521_917774835383787521":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183841"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183841"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":183843,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183841\/revisions\/183843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}