Eleven fighters from Hachd al-Chaabi, a coalition of paramilitaries now integrated into the Iraqi state, were killed on Saturday evening in an ambush by the jihadist group Islamic State north of Baghdad, sources within the Islamic State reported to AFP. Hachd.
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This attack, carried out at night in an isolated region with small arms against soldiers - modus operandi adopted by ISIS since its military defeat in Iraq at the end of 2017 - is much smaller than the double suicide bombing carried out Thursday in the heart of Baghdad, which killed 32 civilians and which poses the threat of a jihadist resurgence in urban areas.
"
IS launched an attack on the Hachd 22 brigade east of Tikrit
", the capital of Salah Eddine province about 150 kilometers north of Baghdad, said Abu Ali al-Maliki, the one of the officers of this brigade.
Eleven Hachd members were killed and ten others were injured, according to other sources within Hachd.
The attack was not claimed, but all sources contacted by AFP accused ISIS.
Bureaucracy and corruption
For experts, Thursday's attack - claimed by the jihadist group's propaganda organ - could be an isolated case because the clandestine IS cells, holed up in the mountainous and desert areas of the country, have neither the organization and the equipment to carry out large-scale attacks in urban areas.
This attack, unprecedented for more than three years in the capital, nevertheless highlighted the shortcomings of the Iraqi security apparatus.
Gnawed like all the country's institutions by bureaucracy and corruption, the security forces are also bearing the brunt of tensions between rival armed groups and between political members of all stripes, as the country prepares to hold early legislative elections. whose date is still debated.
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In fact, IS attacks in recent months have mostly taken place in the provinces of Salah Eddine and Kirkuk, further north, where Kurdish and federal forces are fighting, creating a breach into which jihadists are engulfed.
Seventeen people - mostly soldiers - were, for example, killed in November in ISIS attacks north of Baghdad.
This week's attacks come as the United States has reduced its troops in Iraq to 2,500, while nearly all of the other member states of the anti-ISIS coalition have left the country since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
