IS attack kills four in Kurdish-held Iraq town

Militants from the Islamic State jihadist group killed four people and wounded 15 on Tuesday in a relatively rare attack behind Kurdish lines in northern Iraq, officials said.

 A suicide bomber detonated explosives near the entrance to a police building in the town of Dibis in Kirkuk province.

 Other militants entered the police building and the local government headquarters, and a total of three more militants were killed.

 Another suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle at a checkpoint at the entrance to the Dibis area, wounding an unknown number of members of the security forces.

 Dibis is located near the Bai Hassan oilfield northwest of the Kirkuk provincial capital, far from the areas of the province held by IS which overran large parts of Iraq last year.

 Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, which wants to incorporate Kirkuk, solidified its control over parts of the province after federal forces fled a sweeping IS offensive in June 2014, but the jihadists hold areas in southwest Kirkuk.

 Attacks in Kurdish-held areas of Kirkuk province that are behind the front lines have decreased compared with before the offensive, and are now relatively rare.

Caption: A Kurdish Peshmerga fighter monitors Isis positions on the outskirts of Makhmour, near Erbil in northern Iraq. 

Photo Credit: www.independent.co.uk