Iraqi airstrike kills 3 suspected militants near Kirkuk’s Altun Kupri

KIRKUK — An army airstrike killed three suspected militants near Altun Kupri, a subdistrict on the Kirkuk-Erbil road, on Friday night, and forces arrested the person who had transported them, the Security Media Cell said, hours after troops sealed off the area.

The army’s aviation arm carried out the strike at 8 p.m. in the area held by the 32nd Infantry Brigade of the 8th Mechanized Division, the cell said in a statement. It described the three as terrorists but did not say which group they belonged to. Forces of the Kirkuk Operations Command were still searching the area, and more details would follow, it said.

Witnesses in Qara Bag village, east of Altun Kupri, told 964media earlier in the evening that the army was fighting gunmen they believed were Isis members. Iraqi aircraft were striking the gunmen’s positions, and heavy explosions could be heard on the edge of the subdistrict, they said.

The army had shut every road into and out of Altun Kupri, known in Kurdish as Pirde, in both directions after intelligence that three gunmen in a pickup truck had entered the subdistrict, which lies between Kirkuk and Erbil governorates. The Kirkuk-Altun Kupri, Erbil-Altun Kupri and Dibis-Altun Kupri roads were closed, and a security checkpoint closed the main Erbil-Kirkuk highway, 964media correspondents reported.

Security forces spotted the vehicle, suspected of carrying Isis militants, inside the town’s market, but held back from approaching it or opening fire there, a 964media correspondent in Kirkuk said. They wanted to avoid a repeat of a Counter-Terrorism Service raid on Sept. 27 around a supermarket in Altun Kupri, in which two local teenagers were killed.

A large army force surrounded the subdistrict, and the commander of the Kirkuk Operations Command arrived with reinforcements to oversee the operation, the correspondent said. The subdistrict’s entrances and exits later reopened, and the Erbil-Kirkuk road was open to traffic by late evening, 964media correspondents reported.

The Counter-Terrorism Service said after the September raid that two civilians were killed in a clash with two suspected Isis members in a densely populated area of the town. Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi sent an investigative committee to Kirkuk and ordered compensation for the families.

Iraqi F-16s struck three suspected militants and destroyed a tunnel in Kirkuk’s Zghaitun Valley on Nov. 9. Kirkuk accounted for 12 of the 21 Isis attacks documented in Iraq between July 1 and Oct. 14, according to the fact-checking platform Sahih Iraq. Isis lost control of territory in Iraq in 2017, but suspected members remain active in rural and remote areas.