IS IED explosion kills Kurdish 'elite' Peshmerga officer in Iraqi Kurdistan

An officer from the Peshmerga forces was killed and eight others injured on Wednesday when a suspected Islamic State group bomb targeted a convoy of elite soldiers in the Iraqi-Kurdistan region. 

"In a terrorist attack on 19 October in Nawjul area (southeast of Kirkuk) a bomb detonated [near] the Commando Forces," Shorsh Ismael, the minister of Peshmerga in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) said in a statement.

"Unfortunately, Captain Zuhair Mohammed was martyred and Akam Omar, commander of the force as well as several other Peshmergas were wounded." 

Omar was severely wounded and is now in intensive care at a hospital in Sulaymaniyah, local Kurdish outlets reported.

The minister said they had been warned of an IS threat in the area and vowed to "completely eliminate" the group in these territories.  

Balanbo Mohammed, a lawmaker with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party and a member of the Peshmerga committee told The New Arab that "IS terrorists" were responsible for the attack.  

IS militants dominated large swathes of Iraq and neighbouring Syria in 2014 before a US-backed, Iraqi government assault led to the defeat of the group in late 2017.

A low-level jihadist insurgency continues in Iraq, particularly in rural areas north of Baghdad, around the city of Kirkuk, and in the eastern provinces of Diyala and Salaheddin.