Seven police personnel killed, injured in confrontations against Islamic State in Kirkuk

Kirkuk (IraqiNews.com) Seven police personnel were killed and injured during confrontations with Islamic State, southwest of Kirkuk, a security source from the province was quoted saying.

Speaking to Shafaq News, the source said, “Troops of the 19th brigade of the Federal Police clashed with Islamic State militants after besieging them in Helwati village in Hawija.”

The confrontations between the two sides, according to the source, left seven police personnel killed and injured.

Some Islamic State members were also killed during the clashes, the source said, however, their number is still unknown.

On Wednesday, the Security Media Center, a media arm of the Joint Operations Command, said troops found the dead bodies of eight people kidnapped by Islamic State, earlier this week, on the Baghdad-Kirkuk road.

The militant group had announced through some videos posted on its propaganda websites that seventeen people were kidnapped on the road between Kirkuk and Baghdad. Among those people, where the six men who appeared in the video.

The group made the threat, on Sunday, in a video it released on its Amaq propaganda agency, showing six men, with their faces covered in bruises. The detainees were members of the Iraqi police and al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces), who were kidnapped last week on a road linking Baghdad to Kirkuk.