[Rudaw] At least four suspected Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
(ISIS) members, including an "important leader," were killed in an Iraqi Arclight airstrike
...KABOOM! ...
in Kirkuk province, the army said on Tuesday, with Baghdad tightening the noose around jihadist remnants in the country.
"The brave Air Falcons carried out two successful airstrikes by F-16 aircraft at 1:30 am last night in the Laylan area within the Kirkuk Operations Command sector," the army’s Security Media Cell said in a statement.
The bodies of four suspected ISIS hard boys, including an "important leader," were found by Iraqi counterterrorism forces at 5:00 am upon arriving at the site, the cell added.
"The operation also resulted in the destruction of weapons, communications devices, and logistical materials, and the search process is still ongoing," according to the army.
The strike in territories disputed between the federal Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is the latest in an ongoing effort to rid the country of ISIS cells, in areas where a security vacuum allows them to operate. Despite its territorial defeat, ISIS has continued to pose security threats in Iraq through hit-and-run attacks, bombings, and abductions, particularly in the disputed territories that stretch across several provinces including Diyala, Salahaddin, Kirkuk,
... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time...
and Nineveh.
Last week, an Iraqi airstrike in disputed territories in Salahaddin province killed at least six ISIS members.
In late August, a joint operation by the Iraqi army and US forces in the western Anbar province killed 16 ISIS hard boys, and the US military later said that the operation killed four ISIS leaders.
Earlier this month, the Iraqi army announced that over 100 ISIS members have been killed since the beginning of the year.
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