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SAMARRA, Iraq: Daesh suicide bombers killed seven members of Iraq’s security forces in an attack on an Iraqi police and army base Wednesday in Baiji, north of Baghdad, the Interior Ministry and a local official said.
“Five Daesh suicide bombers ... wearing explosive belts attacked a police and army base at dawn in the Al-Masafi district,” the town’s Mayor Mohammad Mahmoud told AFP.
“Seven members of the security forces were killed and six wounded” in the ensuing firefight, he said.
The ministry’s spokesman Brig. Gen. Saad Maan confirmed the toll and said the “five suicide terrorists” were also killed.
Daesh captured Baiji, a Sunni Arab town around 200 kilometers from the capital, in June 2014 during a lightning offensive that saw the terrorist group rout security forces and grab swathes of Syria and northern Iraq.
Baiji was the scene of some of the longest-running battles between Daesh and Iraqi forces.
The town lies at a major crossroads and its recapture by Iraqi security forces was seen as key to preparing the ground for offensives in Anbar province and later Mosul.
The town and its nearby oil refinery, Iraq’s largest, were recaptured in late 2015 with air support from a US-led coalition and a host of tribal groups and militias.
But despite losing Mosul, the capital of its self-declared caliphate, in July, the terrorist group has continued to launch attacks in areas retaken by Iraqi forces.
Meanwhile, sources said on Tuesday that thousands of Iraqis have fled a Daesh-held town west of Mosul as Iraqi and coalition warplanes step up strikes ahead of a ground offensive to drive out the militants.
Tal Afar and the surrounding area is one of the last pockets of Daesh-held territory in Iraq after victory was declared in July in Mosul. The town, about 150 kilometers east of the Syrian border.
On Monday, hundreds of exhausted civilians were brought by Iraqi army trucks from the front line to a humanitarian collection point west of Mosul. Many described a harrowing journey of a day or more from Tal Afar, with no food or water.
Jassem Aziz Tabo, an elderly man who arrived with his 12-member family, said he had left Tal Afar months ago and gone to a village on the outskirts to escape hunger, airstrikes and violence from the militants.
“Those who tried to escape were captured and shot in the head. They killed my son,” he said. “He tried to escape, he was caught and they killed him.”