BAGHDAD, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- Six Iraqi soldiers were killed and four others injured in an overnight attack by Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, a provincial police officer said on Monday.
The attack took place late on Sunday night when IS militants carried out an attack on army bases at a rural area near the town of al-Maqdadiyah, some 100 km northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, sparking a fierce clash between the two sides, Alaa al-Saadi from Diyala's police told Xinhua.
The clash continued for several hours and only stopped after a reinforcement troops arrived at the scene, al-Saadi said without giving further details about whether the extremist attackers sustained any casualty.
Despite repeated military operations in the Diyala province, remnants of IS militants are still hiding in some rugged areas near the border with Iran, and in the sprawling areas extending from the western part of the province to the Himreen mountainous area in north of the provincial capital Baquba, which itself located some 65 km northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
The security situation in Iraq has been dramatically improved after Iraqi security forces declared they had fully defeated the extremist IS militants across the country late in 2017.
IS remnants, however, have since melted or regrouped in urban areas or resorted to deserts and rugged areas as safe havens, carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians despite operations from time to time to hunt them down.
