Airstrikes kill two police officers in Mosul, three PMF fighters in Kirkuk

NINEVEH — Two police officers were killed in an airstrike on a police unit in Mosul on Saturday, Iraq’s Interior Ministry said, as separate strikes killed three PMF members in Kirkuk.

The ministry said the strike hit a position of the First Emergency Police Regiment and identified the dead as regiment commander Omar Mahmoud Khalaf and Commissioner Rafea Abdullah Ahmed. A second strike wounded five personnel while they were evacuating their injured colleagues, the ministry said, describing both strikes as “Zionist-American” attacks.

The PMF said separately that airstrikes targeted one of its headquarters in Kirkuk on Saturday evening, killing three members and wounding four others.

The strikes are the latest in a sustained wave of attacks on Iraqi security forces since the regional war began Feb. 28. Earlier this week, consecutive strikes on Habbaniyah base in Anbar killed 22 military personnel over two days — seven in a strike on the base’s military clinic on Wednesday and 15 including the Anbar operations commander on Tuesday. Neither the United States nor Israel has publicly claimed responsibility for any of the strikes on Iraqi security forces.