Senior officer shot dead by unknown gunmen on Kirkuk road
Representational photo.
Kirkuk (IraqiNews.com) A senior police officer was shot dead by unknown gunmen at a road in Kirkuk province, Kurdish security sources were quoted saying on Monday.
Aljournal News website quoted the source saying that unknown attackers targeted the vehicle of al-Sharia village’s police chief, Fadel al-Sabaawi with a barrage of gunfire, killing him along with his son.
al-Sharia is a village of al-Zab region, a part of the former Islamic State stronghold town of Hawija, southwest of Kirkuk.
According to the source, the gunmen erected a fake checkpoint on the Hawija-Kirkuk road, attacking the officer’s car while it was passing by.
Iraqi forces recaptured Hawija from Islamic State militants in October, ending nearly three years of the group’s occupation of the town that left thousands displaced and hundreds dead.
Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared final victory over Islamic State earlier this month, marking the end of the group’s self-proclaimed “caliphate” rule declared by its supreme commander, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in 2014 from Mosul.
Iraqi security forces still, however, struggle with occasional attacks blamed on IS across the country, reinforcing a belief that the militants still pose a security challenge even after they lost all of their major havens.