Two Iraqi soldiers, including a major, were killed Tuesday when a suicide bomber blew himself up during an army raid targeting ISIS militants north of Baghdad.
The two soldiers belonged to a joint force of the 6th Division of the Baghdad Operations Command and the Iraqi National Security Service, which were raiding an ISIS hideout in Tarimiya district north of Baghdad.
A trapped militant "detonated his explosives belt, killing a major and another soldier, also wounding three others", an interior ministry source told AFP, asking not to be named.
A second militant was killed when he also tried to set off a suicide bomb in the army operation in the rural area of Tarmiya, the source said.
In late 2017, Iraq announced the military defeat of ISIS after fighting battles that lasted about three years. But a low-level insurgency has persisted, particularly in rural areas north of Baghdad around the city of Kirkuk and in the eastern provinces of Diyala and Salaheddin.
On Tuesday, spokesman for the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Major General Yahea Rasool revealed that in recent operations, more than 43 ISIS members were killed and their equipment and weapons were confiscated in the northern province of Nineveh.
According to a UN report last year, some 10,000 ISIS fighters remain active in Iraq and Syria.
