Iraqi forces kill senior Savage ISIL commander in Salahuddin

Iraqi security forces have managed to kill a senior commander of the ISIL Takfiri militant group during a cleanup operation in the country’s troubled northern province of Salahuddin.

A local security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Saturday that Iraqi soldiers killed a Chechen ISIL commander, known by his nom de guerre Abu Ibrahim al-Shishani, in an operation purging an area in the province of ISIL remnants, Arabic-language al-Forat news agency reported.

The source added that Shishani was responsible for organizing ISIL militant attacks against Baiji oil refinery, located 180 kilometers (112 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad, over the past month.

Iraqi forces also seized a bulldozer used by ISIL militants to throw up earthwork bulwarks around themselves, destroyed a workshop where improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were being made, and defused a number of car bombs during operations in Hay al-Teen, Qadesiya and al-Awja regions of Salahuddin Province.

Elsewhere, units of government forces killed 37 ISIL Takfiris, among them four bombers clad in explosives-laden jackets, during a gunfight in the town of al-Karma, located 48 kilometers (30 miles) west of Baghdad. Iraqi troopers defused 175 IEDs and destroyed seven terrorist hideouts after the fighting.

Bomb attacks across Iraq

Meanwhile, five civilians lost their lives and six others, among them women and children, sustained injuries when a roadside bomb struck a passenger van on the outskirts of Karma on Saturday morning.

Separately, a bomb went off in Baghdad’s northeastern district of Sadr City on Friday evening, killing a civilian and wounding five others.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the bombings, but such attacks are usually blamed on the ISIL Takfiri terrorists.

Northern and western parts of Iraq have been in chaos since ISIL started its campaign of terror in early June 2014. The terrorists are in control of Mosul and they have swept through parts of the country.

Since then, Iraq’s army has been joined by Kurdish forces, Shia and Sunni volunteers in operations to drive the ISIL terrorists out of the areas they have seized with the recapture of the northern city of Tikrit being their most significant recent achievement.