Eight people were killed and three injured Monday in an attack by gunmen on an Iraqi village previously held by the Islamic State extremist group, officials said.
The attack took place in the village of Albu Bali northwest of Fallujah in Iraq.
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Uday al-Khadran, commissioner of the al-Khalis district where the attack occurred said “a group of terrorists riding motorcycles” had attacked the village at around 8:30 p.m. and that dozens of residents, some of them unarmed, had rushed to confront the attackers, the official Iraqi News Agency reported.
Security forces are searching for those responsible, he said.
The violence came a day after an explosive device went off in northern Iraq, killing at least nine members of the Iraqi federal police force who were on patrol. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in the village of Ali al-Sultan in the Riyadh district of the province of Kirkuk.
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On Wednesday, three Iraqi soldiers were killed when a bomb exploded during a security operation in the Tarmiyah district, north of Baghdad. Among the dead was the commander of the 59th Infantry Brigade.
No one claimed responsibility for that attack either, but remnants of the militant Islamic State group are active in the area and have claimed similar attacks in Iraq in the past.