13 Iraqi police officers killed in ISIS attack, says report

Gunmen opened fire at a federal police checkpoint in rural northern Iraq, sparking clashes that killed 13 police, a security official said Sunday. He blamed the attack on Islamic State militants.

The attack late Saturday on the checkpoint in Satiha village in Kirkuk province also wounded five police. The security official said the clashes with the militants lasted for nearly an hour.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to reporters.

The militant group did not immediately claim responsibility for the attack. But northern Iraq has been a hotspot for IS activity since its territorial defeat in 2017 by Iraqi security forces with assistance from the US-led coalition.

Iraqi forces routinely carry out anti-IS operations in the rugged mountainous northern region and the deserts of western Iraq where they are known to be holed up.

IS attacks have abated in recent years but continue in these areas where security forces are often the target of ambushes, raids and roadside bombs.”Thirteen were killed and three wounded” among the security forces, the officer added. 

A medical source based in Kirkuk confirmed the toll. ISIS seized swathes of Iraq in a lightning offensive in 2014, before being beaten back by a counter-insurgency campaign supported by a US-led military coalition.

The Iraqi government declared the Sunni extremists defeated in late 2017, but they retain sleeper cells which continue to hit security forces with asymmetric attacks.

Jihadist cells regularly target the Iraqi army and police in northern Iraq, but this attack was one of the most deadly this year.

A July 19 bombing claimed by ISIS officially killed 30 people in the Al-Woheilat market in Sadr City, a Shiite suburb of Baghdad.

International coalition troops in Iraq currently number around 3,500, of which 2,500 are US troops.

But Washington has been drawing down its military presence amid attacks on facilities it uses by Iran-aligned armed groups and has said that from next year the role of US troops will be limited to training and advising their Iraqi counterparts. 

Last Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron visited Iraqi Kurdistan and expressed concern about an ISIS “resurgence” in both Iraq and Syria.

He also said that French soldiers deployed in Iraq as part of the international coalition will remain in the country “no matter what choices the Americans make”.