ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Four Iraqi soldiers were killed after Islamic State (ISIS) militants opened fire on a checkpoint belonging to Iraqi security forces in southeastern Kirkuk province on Monday.
The Iraqi Security Media Cell released a statement late Monday confirming the deaths.
“Daesh terrorists opened fire on a station of the third regiment of the 20th brigade of the fifth division in the Daquq area on the Kirkuk highway,” the statement said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
The attack also wounded four other soldiers, according to the statement.
Kirkuk lies in territory disputed between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil.
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The province has long been home to a diverse mix of Kurdish, Arab, Turkmen, and Christian inhabitants. Its exact demographics have been disputed ever since Iraq’s former President Saddam Hussein forcibly transferred people to and from Kirkuk and the surrounding areas during his reign, exacerbating communal tensions.
Baghdad and Erbil jointly administered Kirkuk and other disputed territories until 2014, when Iraqi forces were overrun by ISIS militants who seized control of over a third of the country. Peshmerga forces quickly moved in to secure the province, which remained fully under Kurdish control until October 2017, when Iraqi forces retook the territories following the KRG’s failed independence referendum.
The status of Kirkuk and its surrounding areas has remained unsettled, allowing a security vacuum to form. Though ISIS was declared territorially defeated in Iraq in December 2017, its remaining militants have been able to exploit this vacuum to continue launching attacks and harassing the local population.
The latest Pentagon Inspector General report recorded more than 400 ISIS-claimed or suspected attacks in Iraq from April to June of this year, 70 of which took place in Kirkuk province.
ISIS carried 101 attacks in Iraq between July 23 and August 19, according to its weekly propaganda newspaper al-Naba, accessible on its official telegram channel. Of this number, at least 12 attacks were reported in Kirkuk province.
Iraq's defense ministry and the KRG Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs agreed last month to establish three joint coordination rooms with the aim of eliminating ISIS cells active in disputed Diyala, Kirkuk and Nineveh province.
The extremist group killed the commander of the 59th Brigade of the Iraqi army, Brigadier General Ali Hameed Ghaydan, after militants attacked his convoy north of Baghdad last month.
ISIS also claimed responsibility for the killing of General Brigadier Ahmed al-Lami, commander of the seventh division of the army's 29th brigade in an ambush in Anbar late last month.
