KIRKUK: Gunmen in northern Iraq, where remnants of the militant Islamic State group are active, blew up a vehicle carrying policeman before opening fire killing nine, police sources said on Sunday.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, one of the deadliest in Iraq in recent mon­ths.

The bomb blast in the Kirkuk area hit a vehicle transporting members of Iraq’s federal police.

It was followed by “a direct attack with small arms” near the village of Shalal al-Matar, a federal police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity, attributing the assault to IS.

Iraqi prime minister condemns terrorist attack

“An assailant has been killed and we are looking for the others,” the officer said.

Two policemen initially reported as being wounded later died, bringing the total killed to nine.

IS terrorists seized large swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territory in 2014, declaring a “caliphate” where they ruled with brutality before their defeat in late 2017 by Iraqi forces backed by a US-led military coalition.

IS lost its last Syrian bastion, near the Iraqi border, in 2019.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani condemned the violence as a “cowardly terrorist attack”.

Security forces should show “vigilance, carefully inspect the roads and not provide any opportunity for terrorist elements”, he said.

Sleeper cells

Around 2,500 American soldiers are in the country to assist in the fight against the militants. IS cells, however, remain active in several areas of Iraq.

On Wednesday, three Iraqi soldiers were killed and three others injured when a bomb exploded as their patrol vehicle passed through farmland in Tarmiya, a rural municipality located about 30 kilometres north of the capital Baghdad.

There was no immediate claim for the bombing in a known hotspot of IS sleeper cells.

Last 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.

Iraqi 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.

Despite the setbacks, which has left IS a shadow of its former self, the group has “maintained its ability to launch attacks at a steady pace”, a January report by the United Nations read.

The UN estimates the militant organisation maintains between 6,000 and 10,000 fighters inside Iraq and Syria, exploiting the porous border between the two countries and concentrating mainly in rural areas.

Illegal drugs torched

Meanwhile, Iraq on Sunday burnt some six tons of illegal drugs including vast piles of cannabis, captagon and cocaine, in what officials said was the largest destruction for over a decade.

Government officials, wearing white coveralls and face masks, piled the drugs in holes dug into the sand, doused them with fuel and set them on fire.

Health Minister Saleh al-Has­nawi, speaking at the event outside a military base near Baghdad, said it was the first “destruction operation of this magnitude” since 2009.

The drugs had been seized by forces at border crossings and other sites in Iraq, he said, with some of them stored for several years.

Security forces have intensified narcotics operations in recent years with near-daily announcements of drug seizures and arrests of traffickers.

Areas bordering Iran have become major narcotic trafficking routes for drugs, including crystal methamphetamine.

Vast plumes of black smoke rose into the sky as the stocks were set on fire, which included 350 kilograms of cocaine and 54 million pills — including five million pills of the amphetamine-type stimulant captagon, a government official said. Quantities of crystal methamphetamine and hashish were also destroyed.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2022