ISIS attack kills four in Iraq; mortars, explosives found outside Baghdad, Anbar
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Iraqi military said that an Islamic State attack on early Saturday killed four in the province of Salahuddin, while troops confiscated caches of mortars and explosives in areas south of the capital of Baghdad and in western Anbar province.
In a statement, the Iraqi Ministry of Defense said that the deadly attack occurred in the district of Shirqat, but no further details were offered.
Regarding the armaments discovered south of Baghdad, a post on an official social media page of the ministry on Friday read, "The intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance brigade of the 17th Infantry Division, after receiving intelligence information, found a large pile of equipment in the al-'Elimiyah area."
It further specified that troops found "a 120-mm mortar shell, 34 mortar shells and a 130-mm mortar."
In a separate statement earlier in the day, the ministry announced that "38 explosive devices of different types from the remnants of terrorist groups were confiscated outside residential areas and detonated."
It continued, "The Anbar Operations Command continues its pre-emptive operations in the search and inspection of the remnants of the terrorist gangs and the pursuit of dormant cells and the return of the displaced families to their areas of residence."
On Sunday, Iraq's Ministry of Displacement and Migration announced that, over the previous few days, 129 displaced civilians had returned to their liberated homes in Anbar's border town of al-Qaim.
Four days later, a car bombing in al-Qaim left four causalities, three of them local members of the Hashd al-Shaabi militias, also known as Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).
Iraq declared a military victory against the Islamic State in December 2017, but the terror group continues to carry out insurgency attacks, ambushes, and kidnappings in several provinces, including Kirkuk, Nineveh, Anbar, Salahuddin, and Diyala.
