SULAIMANI (ESTA) — At least 11 fighters from Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) were killed in an ambush said to have been carried out by Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Tikrit north of Baghdad on Saturday, according to the group’s officials.
AFP cited PMF sources as saying that the militants used light weapons and the cover of darkness to target a unit of Hashid al-Shaabi east of Tikrit.
“ISIS launched an attack on the Hashid’s Brigade 22,” one of the unit’s officers Abu Ali al-Maliki told AFP.
PMF security sources told AFP that 11 fighters were killed and 10 others were wounded.
Iraq declared the group territorially defeated in late 2017, but has continued to battle ISIS sleeper cells, mostly in the country’s mountainous and desert areas.
