BAGHDAD (Arab News/Xinhua) – Six Daesh terrorists were killed in a raid in Iraq’s northern province of Nineveh, the government-backed Hashd Sha’abi paramilitary force said in a statement.
A unit with the popular mobilization forces stormed a Daesh hideout near the town of Hatra in the province and killed three Daesh terroists militants inside, it said.
In the northern province of Kirkuk, an army force searched in the morning a Daesh hideout that was destroyed by an airstrike on Thursday in the rugged Wadi al-Shay area, southwest of the namesake provincial capital Kirkuk, some 250 km north of Baghdad, according to a statement issued by the Security Media Cell, a media outlet affiliated with the Iraqi Joint Operations Command.
The troops found the bodies of three Daesh terrorists, as well as ammunition and hand grenades, the Security Media Cell statement said.
The security situation in Iraq has improved since the defeat of the Daesh in 2017. However, Daesh terrorists have since melted into urban centers, deserts and rugged areas, carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians.
Also on Friday, Iraqi security forces said they seized 12 million pills of the antispasmodic drug benzhexol, used in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease but also abused as a hallucinogen.
National Security officers recovered the haul from a warehouse in east Baghdad in an operation in which they also made six arrests.
Iraqi security forces have intensified anti-narcotics operations in recent months, with several high-profile seizures reported.
Sharing borders with Syria as well as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Iraq has served as a major conduit for traffickers of captagon, an amphetamine that has its largest market in the wealthy Persian Gulf states.