Police officer killed in drive-by shooting in Kirkuk city
Representational photo
Kirkuk (IraqiNews.com) A policeman was killed in a drive-by shooting in Kirkuk city on Wednesday, a security official told Shafaq News.
“Unidentified gunmen driving an Opel car opened fire at Major Samer Abdel Nabi Jassam at a Kirkuk neighborhood,” spokesman for Kirkuk provincial police Colonel Afrasiau Kamal said.
“Major Jassam breathed his last immediately after he was admitted into the hospital,” Kamal said, adding that the assailants fled the scene into an unknown location.
Earlier in the day, a police officer was seriously injured in a shooting incident west of Baghdad, a security source told Baghdad Today.
The source said a police officer from the Justice Ministry’s prisons protection sector was shot by unidentified gunmen in the area between Ghazaliya and Abu Ghraib neighborhoods west of Baghdad.
The injured cop was carried to a nearby hospital, sustaining severe injuries, the source added.
Iraqi forces took over Kirkuk in mid October as a response to an independence referendum Kurdistan Region held in September for independence from Iraq. Kirkuk is one of the areas where Baghdad and Erbil dispute sovereignty.
Iraqi forces took over oil and military facilities in the province from Kurdish troops. The takeover was mostly peaceful but some fatal clashes occurred.