Militants kill 11 at army post in Baghdad
Eleven people were killed and eight were wounded late on Sunday night when militants attacked an Iraqi military post in western Baghdad, police and medical officials said yesterday.
A government statement put the death toll at four people and three wounded. More were feared dead.
At around 11pm local time, gunmen believed to be from the ISIS terrorist group opened fire on a monitoring tower in the district of Al Radhwaniyah that was manned by Sunni paramilitary troops, killing one and wounding another, a tribal leader said.
The wounded started making calls for support to their base, which was about a kilometre away.
“Whoever rushed to the scene to help was either killed or wounded and had his car burnt,” the leader said.
“The clashes were fierce. Daesh militants were yelling ‘Alahu Akbar’ and fire was coming from three directions,” he said.
“They used light weapons, grenades and roadside bombs to attack those rushing for help,” he said.
“ISIS attacked the monitoring tower, killing five members of the tribal Hashed and six local people who had come to help repel the attack,” a security source said.
A medic said that eight of the wounded were transferred to a hospital in central Baghdad.
Shortly after the attack, the militants fled the scene.
The army and police have launched an operation to find the attackers.
There was no claim of responsibility.
Nearly three years after declaring victory over ISIS in late 2017, Iraqi and American officials are still warning that the war with ISIS is far from over.
According to Iraqi officials, ISIS remnants – mainly locals – are regrouping in small numbers in rural areas of central and northern Iraq, carrying out guerrilla-style attacks and posing a challenge to the work of Iraqi security forces.
At its height, the group overran nearly one-third of Iraq and Syria between the middle of 2014 and late 2017.
Thousands of foreign militants joined from around the world as ISIS established an enormous footprint that stretched across both countries.