IS launches bloody attack on military base, killing 40 Iraqi soldiers

According to AFP, on September 22, a senior Iraqi military officer said that jihadists attacked a military base of the country's army in western Baghdad with 6 suicide bombers, killing 40 soldiers and capturing 70 other soldiers who fled.

According to General Rashid Fleih, four suicide bombers detonated explosive-laden armored personnel carriers at the base in Saqlawiyah on September 21 while two others attacked with explosive belts.

IS forces at the Iraq-Syria border (Source: AFP)

“Forty soldiers and officers were killed while 70-80 people” who fled the base and were later captured by Islamic State (IS) militants were uncontactable, Fleih stressed.

Five days earlier, IS militants had blown up a bridge near the base. They also planted bombs on roads leading to the area, making it more difficult to get reinforcements and forcing soldiers to fight the militants from inside the base. The September 21 incident was one of the deadliest single attacks on Iraqi soldiers in recent years./.

According to VNA