KIRKUK: Three Iraqi soldiers were killed and four others wounded Sunday in a pre-dawn attack in the country’s north blamed on the Daesh group, a military official said.
The assailants used automatic weapons in the attack on their barracks in Wadi Al-Naft, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of the city of Kirkuk, the official said on condition of anonymity.
“Three soldiers, including two officers, were killed, and four other soldiers were wounded,” the official told AFP. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The attack occurred in an area disputed between Iraq’s federal government, which holds Kirkuk, and the country’s autonomous northern region of Kurdistan.
Daesh extremists seized swathes of Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014, declaring a “caliphate” which they ruled with brutality before their defeat in late 2017 by Iraqi forces backed by a US-led military coalition.
Despite the setbacks, the extremist group can still call on an underground network of fighters to carry out attacks on both sides of the porous border, the United Nations says.
In April, the international coalition set up to fight the Sunni Muslim extremists said there had been a reduction in Daesh attacks in both Iraq and Syria.
In March, a senior Iraqi military official said Daesh had between 400 and 500 active fighters in the Shiite-majority country.
Daesh group kill three Iraq soldiers: military official
https://arab.news/ztyr6
Daesh group kill three Iraq soldiers: military official
- The attack occurred in an area disputed between Iraq’s federal government, which holds Kirkuk, and the country’s autonomous northern region of Kurdistan
Israeli settler attack injures Palestinian baby, five arrested
- The eight-month-old infant suffered “moderate injuries to the face and head” in the late Wednesday attack
- Israeli police said five suspects had been arrested for their “alleged involvement in serious, violent incidents in the village of Sair“
JERUSALEM: Israeli security forces announced on Thursday the arrest of five Israeli settlers over their alleged involvement in an attack on a Palestinian home that injured a baby girl in the occupied West Bank.
The eight-month-old infant suffered “moderate injuries to the face and head” in the late Wednesday attack, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
It blamed the attack on “a group of armed settlers,” accusing them of “throwing stones at homes and property” in the town of Sair, north of Hebron.
A statement from the Israeli police said that five suspects had been arrested for their “alleged involvement in serious, violent incidents in the village of Sair.”
Israeli security forces had received reports of “stones being thrown by Israeli civilians toward a Palestinian home,” adding a Palestinian girl was injured.
“The preliminary investigation determined the involvement of several suspects who came from a nearby outpost,” the statement said, referring to Israeli settlements not officially recognized by Israeli authorities.
All Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal by the international community.
Some are also illegal under Israeli law, though many of those are later given official recognition.
Almost none of the perpetrators of previous attacks by settlers have been held to account by the Israeli authorities.
A Telegram group linked to the “Hilltop Youth,” a movement of hard-line settlers who advocate direct action against Palestinians, posted a video showing property damage in Sair.
More than 500,000 Israelis currently live in settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, as do around three million Palestinians.
Violence involving settlers has risen in recent years, according to the United Nations, and October was the worst month since it began recording such incidents in 2006, with 264 attacks that caused casualties or property damage.
The violence in the West Bank, a territory occupied by Israel since 1967, has surged since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, which triggered the Gaza war.
Since the start of the war, Israeli troops and settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, including many militants as well as dozens of civilians, according to an AFP tally based on figures from the Palestinian health ministry.
According to official Israeli figures, at least 44 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or Israeli military operations in the same period.
