BAGHDAD —
Iraqi air strikes on Saturday killed nine suspected "terrorists" implicated
in a deadly
Daesh attack on an army base earlier this month, the military said.
اضافة اعلان
The January 21 attack, which killed 11
soldiers in Hawi Al-Azim in the eastern province of Diyala, was the deadliest
claimed by the Islamist extremists in Iraq this year.
In a statement released late Saturday, the
military said it had "identified the exact whereabouts in Hawi Al-Azim of
the terrorist group which perpetrated this criminal act".
"Three precision strikes by Iraqi F-16s
have so far killed nine terrorist elements," the statement said, adding
that the mission was still underway.
Daesh overran large swathes of Iraq and
neighboring Syria in 2014, declaring a new "caliphate" for Muslims,
before Baghdad declared victory in late 2017 after a grinding campaign.
But a low-level insurgency by the extremists
has persisted, flaring up particularly in rural areas north of Baghdad around
the city of Kirkuk, and in the eastern provinces of Diyala and Salaheddin.
The base attack coincided with a brazen
prison break attempt over the border in Syria that has triggered days of
clashes between IS fighters and Kurdish forces backed by US-led coalition
troops and aircraft.
The fighting in and around Ghwayran prison
in the northeastern city of Hasakeh has killed at least 270 people, including
around 189 Islamist extremists, 74 Kurdish-led fighters and seven civilians,
according to the
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based
monitoring group.
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