BAGHDAD, May 9 (Xinhua) -- A total of eight people were killed on Thursday in two attacks by Islamic State (IS) militants in the Iraqi provinces of Nineveh and Salahudin, security officials said.
In the early morning, IS militants broke into the house of the mayor of al-Gawar village in the southwest of Mosul city, some 400 km north of the capital Baghdad, killing him, his wife and four of his sons, and injuring two of his other family members, said Ahmed Ali from the media office of the Nineveh Operations Command.
Iraqi security forces rushed to the scene and launched a search operation to track the assailants, Ali added.
In the central province of Salahudin, IS militants stormed a mill and shot dead the guard in a village near the town of Shirqat, some 280 km north of Baghdad, Mohammed al-Bazi, from Salahudin's provincial police, told Xinhua.
The IS extremists set fire to the mill before fleeing the scene, al-Bazi said.
A soldier was killed when a roadside bomb planted by IS militants detonated as Iraqi security forces arrived at the scene, al-Bazi added.
The security situation in Iraq has been improved since Iraqi security forces fully defeated the IS across the country late in 2017.
The IS remnants, however, have since melted into urban areas or resorted to deserts and rugged areas, carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians.
