Two Iraqi soldiers, including an officer, were killed on Tuesday (April 26th) by a suicide bomber who blew himself up during a counter-terrorism operation in an area north of Baghdad where the Islamic State group has cells, it was reported. learned from a secure source.
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The two soldiers were part of a detachment that carried out an anti-terrorist raid in the orchards of Tarmiya, a rural municipality located north of the capital that the Iraqi security forces have all the difficulties in the world to secure.
During the operation, a suicide bomber "
triggered his explosive belt, killing a commander, another soldier and wounding three others
", a security source at the Interior Ministry told AFP on condition of anonymity. .
A second suicide bomber "
tried to blow himself up, but the soldiers killed
him" before he had time to set off his explosives.
In 2017, Iraq declared its military "
victory
" against the Islamic State (IS) but the jihadists are still active in several areas, west and north of Baghdad, and in particular in Tarmiya.
In this area, they take advantage of bushes, palm groves and other ditches to hide and launch sporadic attacks, especially against the police.
The Iraqi army regularly combs the areas where the IS is present.
On Tuesday, Iraqi military command spokesman Yahya Rasul said a recent army operation in the northern province of Nineveh, of which Mosul is the capital, had led to the elimination
of "43 elements of the Islamic State
”.
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After a meteoric rise in 2014 in Iraq and neighboring Syria and the conquest of vast territories, the IS saw its self-proclaimed "
caliphate
" overthrown under the blow of successive offensives in these two countries, respectively in 2017 and 2019. In Iraq and Syria, the jihadist organization would retain "
a total of 10,000 active fighters
", according to a UN report released last year.
