According to police and government officials in Iraq, at least seven federal police officers were killed on Sunday in an attack in the northern city of Kirkuk, where remnants of the jihadist organisation known as the Islamic State are still active.
A device detonated near the truck transporting the men. Under the condition of anonymity, a federal police official who identified IS as the attacker told AFP that the strike was followed by "a direct attack with small guns" close to the town of Chalal al-Matar.
There hasn't been any public acknowledgement of a group making the attack.
Two police officers had been hurt, and the officer claimed that one of the attackers was dead.
Seven police officers and other law enforcement officers were killed in the incident, according to a ministry of interior official in Baghdad who verified it.
IS captured large areas of land in Iraq and Syria in 2014, ruthlessly ruling over them as a self-declared "caliphate" until they were defeated by Iraqi forces supported by a US-led military coalition in late 2017.
2019 saw the destruction of IS's last bastion in Syria, close to the Iraqi border.
Up to 2,500 American soldiers are still stationed in Iraq as trainers as part of the US-led coalition's combat operations against IS, which lasted through December last year.
Despite this, there are still some parts of Iraq where IS poses a threat.
The anti-IS counterterrorism operations by the security forces in Baghdad have not halted, and they continue to report on the deaths of IS members in bombs and ground invasions.
According to a UN report from earlier this year, despite its recent setbacks, which have reduced IS to a shell of what it once was, the organisation can still rely on an underground network of between 6,000 and 10,000 individuals to launch attacks on both sides of the open Iraqi-Syrian border.
Three Iraqi troops were killed on Wednesday by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, according to the defence ministry.
Although no one has taken credit, the event occurred in a well-known IS stronghold.
According to a military source, four Iraqi soldiers were reportedly killed last month during a machine gun attack on a remote military outpost in northern Iraq close to Kirkuk. As far as I'm aware, nobody has already given themselves credit.
The first such assault in the nation's capital in more than three years, IS claimed responsibility for a double suicide attack that occurred in a Baghdad market that month. The incident occurred in January 2021, and 32 people died as a consequence.