Death Toll Of IS Militants Rises To 16 After Iraqi Airstrikes On Hideouts
Baghdad: Iraqi security forces on Tuesday found two more bodies of Islamic State (IS) militants, who were killed in a recent military operation in the western province of Anbar, bringing the death toll of IS militants to 16. According to a statement from the Security Media Cell (SMC), affiliated with the Iraqi Joint Operations Command, Iraqi forces carried out an airdrop operation on Tuesday at 4 am (local time), targeting IS hideouts in the Anbar desert, where the two bodies were found.
The statement noted that Iraqi security forces on Tuesday used helicopter gunships to destroy three IS militants’ trucks in the desert, Xinhua news agency reported.
According to SMC, Iraqi forces on August 29, backed by US-led coalition forces, together carried out airstrikes on four camouflaged hideouts and engaged in clashes with IS militants who fled airstrikes, killing 14 of them, including important IS leaders.
Although, the security condition in Iraq has improved since the defeat of IS in 2017, yet IS remnants successfully sneaked into the urban centres, deserts, and rugged areas, carrying out frequent guerrilla attacks against security forces and civilians.
The US military and Iraq, together, launched a joint raid that targeted suspected IS militants in the country’s western desert, which had killed at least 15 people and hurt seven American troops, an official confirmed last Sunday.
For years after dislodging the militants from their self-declared caliphate across Iraq and Syria, US forces have fought the IS, with the casualties from this raid being higher than in previous ones. The US military’s Central Command confirmed that the militants were armed with “numerous weapons, grenades, and explosive ‘sucide’ belts” during the raid last Thursday, which Iraqi forces said happened in the country’s Anbar Desert.
However, last month, the US military said the number of attacks claimed by IS in Syria and Iraq on the truck doubled this year, compared to the previous year. IS claimed 153 attacks had been made in the two countries in the first six months of 2024; comparatively, 121 attacks were made in all of 2023.
Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza last October, US military presence in the region has become particularly controversial.
An umbrella group of Iran-backed militants calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq has periodically launched drone attacks on US base houses situated in Iraq and Syria, which they said was in retaliation for Washington’s support of Israel in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. They aimed to force US forces to withdraw from Iraq.
(With IANS Inputs)