ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Two top Islamic State (ISIS) militants were killed in a raid at dawn on Monday by the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service (ICTS) in the southern Kirkuk province town of Daquq, the ICTS has announced.
Two other ISIS militants were detained in the "surprise operation", the counter-terror force said in a statement released on Monday.
“At dawn today [Monday] a special force from the Counter-Terrorism forces carried out a surprise operation that was based on a major intelligence effort, resulting in the killing of two terrorists among the leaders of Daesh [ISIS] gangs...and the arrest of two others in the district of Daquq,” reads the ICTS statement, which uses the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
Daquq is part of a stretch of territory in northern Iraq disputed by Erbil and Baghdad. Iraqi forces retook Kirkuk province from the Peshmerga in Iraqi-Kurdish conflict in October 2017, after a Kurdistan independence referendum held one month earlier.
Continued contest has left a security vacuum in the disputed territories, which remnants of ISIS have been able to exploit even after its territorial defeat in Iraq in December 2017.
Talks are underway between Erbil and Baghdad to resume security cooperation in the disputed territories to bring ISIS activity to a halt. Erbil and Baghdad are establishing coordination security rooms in Kirkuk, Diyala, and Nineveh – all home to disputed territories – to improve their joint security efforts.
In a separate operation, another ICTS unit detained two “dangerous” ISIS militants in the western Iraqi town of Fallujah on Monday, the ICTS statement said.
“Defending the homeland and protecting its national security is the sacred task of the men of the counter-terrorism apparatus... our effort continues until this pure land is released from the clutches of terrorism,” the statement added.
Kirkuk has recently been subject to a spate of ISIS attacks. Gunmen attacked the offices of the Iraqi Directorate for Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence in the city of Kirkuk in April, and coalition warplanes regularly bomb ISIS hideouts in the province.
Jabar Yawar, secretary general at the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs, warned in April that an ISIS resurgence has been underway for some time.
“According to our data, the group increased its activities in 2018 and 2019, especially in Kurdistani areas outside of the Kurdistan Region administration, including Diyala, Hamrin, Kirkuk, Tuz Khurmatu, and Qarachogh. In Qarachogh, they even established bases,” Yawar told Rudaw.
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.
Most frequently hit was the eastern Iraqi province of Diyala, where the Pentagon reported 150 of the quarter's attacks had taken place. Other attacks were reported in the provinces of Kirkuk, Anbar, Nineveh, and Salahaddin.
