At least nine police officers have been killed in an attack in northern Iraq.
According to the police, a bomb exploded near an armored police van near the village of Schalal al-Matar on Sunday, after which the security forces were directly attacked "with small arms".
One attacker was killed and others are being sought, a police representative told the AFP news agency.
The jihadist militia Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the attack.
IS fighters detonated an explosive device and then attacked the police with machine guns and hand grenades, the IS explained in the online service Telegram.
The jihadist militia continues to attack security forces in Iraq, especially in sparsely populated desert or mountain regions.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani condemned the "cowardly terrorist attack".
He urged the security forces "to be vigilant, to watch the streets carefully and not to give terrorist elements a chance".
Between 6,000 and 10,000 IS fighters active
The IS militia had proclaimed a so-called caliphate in large parts of Syria and Iraq from 2014.
In Iraq, the militia was defeated three years later by a US-led international coalition.
Around 2,500 US soldiers are still deployed in the country to support the fight against the jihadists.
Despite this, IS cells are active in several areas of Iraq.
According to a United Nations report published in January 2022, IS is still able to “perform attacks on a regular basis”.
According to recent UN data, between 6,000 and 10,000 militia fighters are active in Iraq and neighboring Syria, taking advantage of the porous border between the two states, among other things.
On Wednesday, three Iraqi soldiers were killed and three others injured in a bomb explosion in the rural town of Tarmiya, north of the capital Baghdad.
Tarmija is a known focal point for IS sleeper cells.