Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), an umbrella organization composed of the Arab country’s resistance groups, has fired artillery shells at a position of the remnants of the Daesh (ISIS) terrorists in northern Iraq.
In a statement issued on Sunday, the PMU, better known as Hashd al-Sha’abi, said the Brigade 22 launched an artillery attack on a Daesh position on al-Ayth Island, east of Salahuddin Province.
It asked the Iraqis “not to worry” as long as the PMU forces exist.
Iraqi security forces reportedly said several terrorists were killed and injured in the operation.
Meanwhile, Iraq’s Security Media Cell announced on Sunday that the country’s security and military forces arrested 21 Daesh terrorists, including commanders, in several provinces across the country, including Anbar, Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Diyala, as part of their operations against the remnants of the Takfiri militants.
Also on Sunday, three terrorists were killed in several rounds of Iraqi airstrikes in Salahuddin.
Iraq declared victory over Daesh in December 2017 after a three-year counter-terrorism military campaign.
The terror outfit’s remnants, though, keep staging sporadic attacks across Iraq, attempting to regroup and unleash fresh violence.
Daesh has intensified its terrorist attacks in Iraq since January 2020, when the United States assassinated top Iranian anti-terror commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani and PMU’s deputy commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis near Baghdad International Airport.
Anti-US sentiments sharply increased in Iraq in the aftermath of the assassination, prompting Iraqi lawmakers to pass a bill – only two days after the terrorist attack – that required the Baghdad government to end the presence of all foreign military forces led by Washington.
The US was finally forced to end its “combat mission” in Iraq by the end of 2021, but Iraqi resistance groups say the Pentagon’s so-called advisory role has to end as well.