ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iraqi security forces have reportedly launched an assault on a group of ISIS holdouts in the oil refinery town of Baiji in Salahadin province, an Iraqi police official announced Monday.
“A joint force from the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces) and Iraqi federal police found a group of ISIS militants left inside Baiji, and killed three ISIS suicide bombers and destroyed four armored vehicles rigged with explosives to ambush Iraqi forces inside the town,” said Lieutenant Shakir Jawdat, a federal police commander.
He said along with ISIS casualties and the destruction of the vehicles, four ISIS weapon depots containing light and heavy weapons were also destroyed.
Iraqi forces alongside the Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi militias had reportedly cleared Baiji of ISIS on June 30.
“Bomb disposal teams and Iraqi joint forces have begun defusing landmines and clearing the town of the group’s remaining elements,” Karim Nuri, a spokesperson from the Hashd al-Shaabi, told news agencies on June 30.
“There are still ISIS elements inside Baiji ambushing our forces to halt us from any further advance and we ought to take them away,” Nuri added.
