ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – An Iraqi police officer from a federal police unit was killed and two civilians were wounded in western Kirkuk province on Monday, in what the Security Media Cell labeled a terror attack.
“Security forces repelled an attack by terrorist elements on the village of Al-Majid in Al-Riyadh district in Kirkuk province,” the statement read. “The attack resulted in death of an officer in the Third Infantry Brigade of the Fifth Division of the Federal Police, and the wounding of two civilians.”
The statement also revealed that the attack wounded a member of Hashd al-Ashairy, the Sunni unit of Iraq’s Shiite majority Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), known in Arabic as Hashd al-Shaabi.
The perpetrators have yet to be identified by Iraqi authorities, and no group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.
However, Islamic State (ISIS) militants are very active in the area, and have conducted hit-and-run operations against Iraqi security forces and civilians in Kirkuk and other areas of the disputed areas between Erbil and Baghdad.
There were more than 400 ISIS-claimed or suspected attacks in Iraq between April and June according to a Pentagon Inspector General report, up from the 250 attacks noted in the first three months of 2020.
The most frequently hit area has been the eastern Iraqi province of Diyala, where 150 of the quarter's attacks were reported by Pentagon. Other attacks were reported in the provinces of Kirkuk, Anbar, Nineveh, and Salahaddin, all home to territories contested by Erbil and Baghdad.
This is the third Iraqi military official to be killed in less than a month.
The extremist group killed the commander of the 59th Brigade of the Iraqi army, Brigadier General Ali Hameed Ghaydan, on July 19 after militants attacked his convoy in the Ibn Sena region of al-Tarmia district, north of the capital city of Baghdad.
ISIS also claimed responsibility for the killing of General Brigadier Ahmed al-Lami, commander of 7th division of the 29th brigade of the Iraqi army in an ambush in Anbar nine days later.
Although the government announced the territorial defeat of ISIS in Iraq in December 2017, remnants of the group have returned to their earlier insurgency tactics, ambushing security forces, kidnapping and executing suspected informants, and extorting money from vulnerable rural populations.
