Units of Iraqi security forces have engaged members of ISIL Takfiri militant group during two separate cleanup operations in and around the capital, Baghdad, killing scores of the terrorists.
A total of 59 ISIL militants were killed on Saturday as Iraqi soldiers exchanged heavy fire with the extremists in the town of al-Karma, located 48 kilometers (30 miles) west of Baghdad, Arabic-language al-Forat news agency reported.
Iraqi security forces also defused 46 improvised explosive devices (IEDs), destroyed 15 militant hideouts as well as a pick-up truck with heavy machine gun mounted on, cleared 14 booby-trapped houses, and seized a Browning 50-caliber machine gun.
Separately, Iraqi soldiers killed 14 ISIL terrorists as they destroyed militant hideouts in the western part of the capital. The troops also defused 55 IEDs in Baghdad’s southern neighborhoods of al-Khatimiya and al-Alimiya.
The developments came on the same day as Iraqi soldiers killed a Chechen ISIL commander, known by his nom de guerre Abu Ibrahim al-Shishani, in an operation purging an area in the troubled northern province of Salahuddin of ISIL remnants.
Shishani was reportedly responsible for organizing ISIL militant attacks against Baiji oil refinery, located 180 kilometers (112 miles) north of Baghdad over the past month.
Northern and western parts of Iraq have been in chaos since ISIL started its campaign of terror in early June 2014. The terrorists are in control of Mosul and they have swept through parts of the country.
Since then, Iraq’s army has been joined by Kurdish forces, Shia and Sunni volunteers in operations to drive the ISIL terrorists out of the areas they have seized with the recapture of the northern city of Tikrit being their most significant recent achievement.
MP/MKA/HMV