Airstrike kills two ISIS militants in Kirkuk province: Iraqi military

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Two Islamic State (ISIS) militants have been killed in an airstrike on Kirkuk province, the Iraqi military’s official media source said on Sunday.

The airstrike were conducted by F-16 planes on Wadi al-Kour in the province's Daquq district, according to a statement from Iraqi Security Media Cell published by Iraqi state media.

Though ISIS was declared militarily defeated in Iraq in December 2017, remnants of the terrorist group have been able to continue conducting attacks in territory disputed between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), where security is patchy. Kirkuk was under Kurdish control until October 2017, when Iraqi forces retook the disputed territories following the KRG’s failed independence referendum.

Attacks by ISIS have included ambushes on security forces, the kidnap and execution of suspected informants, and extortion from vulnerable rural populations.

Two Kirkuk residents were kidnapped by ISIS and released for $40,000 in November after being held in captivity for six months. 

Two wells were bombed at Kirkuk’s Khabbaz oilfield on December 9, an attack ISIS later claimed responsibility for.

ISIS also claimed responsibility for an IED explosion in the village of Palkana in November, which killed two Iraqi security force members.

On Thursday, ISIS claimed in its weekly propaganda newspaper al-Naba that it had killed and injured at least fifteen people  in eight attacks in Iraq from December 24 to December 30.

Two ISIS militants were killed in a federal police operation in al-Rashad district, southwest Kirkuk province on December 26, and the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service (ICTS) arrested two ISIS militants in an operation in Kirkuk on December 29.