ISIS militants killed two members of the Iraqi security forces, Reuters reported Monday, in the wake of a panicked US drawdown in neighboring Syria which pushed US troops into Iraq. According to the Iraqi military, three additional security personnel were wounded when attempting to retrieve the bodies of the dead.
“Elements of the terrorist Daesh gangs attacked two security checkpoints in the Alas oilfields area of Salahuddin province, and an improvised explosive device blew up a vehicle belonging to security forces stationed there, leading to the martyrdom of two of them,” a statement from the Iraqi military said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
Iraqi security forces and the mostly Shia, Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) are on the hunt for the attackers, Reuters reports.
The attack comes as experts and members of the military have grown concerned about an ISIS comeback in Iraq and Syria; experts have warned about ISIS members breaking out of makeshift prisons in northeastern Syria guarded by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that are now facing Turkish attacks, and the Pentagon issued a report in 2018 showing that remaining ISIS members in both Iraq and Syria were not only still active, but resurging and adapting because of the Trump administration’s actions in the region. Iraqi and US forces eliminated the group’s territorial hold in Iraq in 2017, and the territorial caliphate as a whole was eliminated in March of 2019.
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Article URL : https://www.businessinsider.com/isis-killed-iraqi-security-forces-as-us-troops-leave-syria-2019-10