“A number of ISIS fighters today evening overran a Hashd position … killing two Hashd fighters and injuring three others,” Kawa Shekhani, military advisor to Salahaddin’s governor, told Rudaw’s Sirwan Abbas.
The ISIS militants fled and the injured PMF fighters were taken to Tikrit hospital, Shekhani added.
The attack came as the Iraqi government is increasingly under pressure to expel US troops, with Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani on Friday saying the government is working to establish a committee to end the presence of the international coalition against ISIS in the country.
The pressure campaign sponsored by Iran-backed Iraqi militias, some of whom have official representation in Sudani’s government, increasingly mounted after an American drone strike against the PMF’s Harakat al-Nujaba in Baghdad on Thursday killed two, including Mushtaq Talib al-Saeedi, better known as Abu Taqwa, a former commander of al-Nujaba and the deputy commander of the PMF’s Baghdad Belt Operations.
The strike was in retaliation to a spate of drone attacks by pro-Iran militias on American interests in Iraq and Syria since mid-October in response to Washington’s support for Israel in its war against Palestinian Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
Sudani defended his decision by saying the “justifications of its [the coalition’s] existence have ended” in Iraq as ISIS has been rendered unable to pose security threats in the country.
However, frequent ISIS attacks, particularly in areas disputed by the federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), present a challenge to the prime minister’s claims.
ISIS rose to power and seized control of swathes of Iraqi territory during a brazen offensive in 2014 but it was declared territorially defeated in 2017 when its so-called caliphate in the country fell as Iraqi and Kurdish fighters, supported by a US-led international coalition, claimed back lands lost to the jihadists.
Despite its territorial defeat, the group has continued to pose a serious security threat to the country through hit-and-run attacks, bombings, and abductions in several provinces, particularly in areas disputed between Erbil and Baghdad which stretch across the provinces of Salahaddin, Diyala, Kirkuk, and Nineveh.
In the early hours of Sunday, Iraqi air force jets struck three suspected ISIS hideouts in Diyala province and “achieved direct hits on the defeated terrorist elements,” the country’s Security Media Cell said.
Around 2,500 American troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria are leading an international coalition through Operation Inherent Resolve that has assisted Kurdish, Iraqi, and local Syrian forces in the fight against ISIS.
