BAGHDAD, May 30 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi security forces on Thursday freed an abducted Yazidi woman and killed seven Islamic State (IS) militants in an operation in the western province of Anbar, the Iraqi military said.
Acting on intelligence reports, a force from the intelligence service raided an IS hideout in a desert area in the province, killing the seven IS militants inside the hideout and freeing the Yazidi woman, a statement by the media office of the Joint Operations Command said.
The Yazidi minority are primarily ethnic Kurds whose religion incorporates elements of many faiths. There are about 600,000 Yazidis in Iraq, with about 80 percent of them living in the towns of Sinjar and Bashiqa in Iraq's northern province of Nineveh.
In 2014, when IS militants took control of large swathes in northern and central Iraq, the extremist militants killed thousands of Yazidis and kidnapped thousands of their women and children.
The security situation in Iraq was dramatically improved after Iraqi security forces fully defeated the extremist IS militants across the country late in 2017.
IS remnants, however, have since melted in urban areas or resorted to deserts and rugged areas, carrying out guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians despite military operations from time to time to hunt them down.
