DAMASCUS
\nAt least seven members of Iraq\u2019s federal police were killed on Sunday during an attack near Kirkuk in the country\u2019s north, where remnants of the militant Islamic State (IS) group are active, police and government sources told media.
\nA bomb blast initially targeted a truck transporting the men. It was followed by \u201ca direct attack with small arms\u201d, near the village of Chalal al-Matar, a federal police officer who attributed the assault to the IS, told AFP on condition of anonymity.
\nNo group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
\n\u201cAn assailant has been killed and we are looking for the others,\u201d the officer said, adding that two policemen were also wounded in the attack.
\nIn Baghdad, an official from the Ministry of Interior confirmed the attack, saying seven police, including one officer, were killed.
\nThe IS seized large swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territory from 2014, declaring a \u201ccaliphate\u201d where they ruled with brutality before their defeat in late 2017 by Iraqi forces backed by a US-led military coalition.
\nIS lost its last Syrian bastion, near the Iraqi border, in 2019.
\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 as trainers.
\nIS remnants, however, remain active in several areas of Iraq.
\nBaghdad\u2019s 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.
\nDespite the setbacks, which have left the IS a shadow of its former self, the group can still call on an underground network of between 6,000 and 10,000 fighters to carry out attacks on both sides of the porous Iraqi-Syrian border, according to a UN report released earlier this year.
\nOn Wednesday a roadside bomb that hit a military vehicle killed three Iraqi soldiers in farmland north of Baghdad, the defence ministry said.
\nThere was no immediate claim for the bombing in a known hotspot of 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.
\nIn January 2021, IS claimed responsibility for a twin suicide attack at a Baghdad market that killed 32 people, the first such assault in the city for more than three years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DAMASCUS At least seven members of Iraq\u2019s federal police were killed on Sunday during an attack near Kirkuk in the country\u2019s north, where remnants of the militant Islamic State (IS) group are active, police and government sources told media. A bomb blast initially targeted a truck transporting the men. It was followed by \u201ca direct […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302030,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-302013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n