Three corpses of Islamic State members found in Diyala

Diyala (IraqiNews.com) Authorities in Diyala have run into three decomposed Islamic State members bodies in northeast of Diyala, a local official was quoted saying on Friday.

Awwad al-Rubaiy, head of the security committee at Abu Saida precinct, told Alsumaria News that the corpses were found in Mekheisa, 30 km northeast of Baqubah.

The borders between Diyala and neighboring Salahuddin have seen occasional attacks by Islamic State militants and counterattacks from security forces backed by the U.S.-led international coalition.

Iraqi forces are currently fighting Islamic State members out of their very last enclave in Iraq, western Anbar’s city of Rawa. A government campaign, backed by paramilitary troops and the coalition has, since October, managed to recapture the group’s former capital, Mosul, the town of Tal Afar, west of Nineveh, Kirkuk’s Hawija, and Anbar’s Annah and Qaim.

Islamic State declared a self-styled “caliphate” from Mosul in June 2014. Though the group is nearing a total loss of its territorial influence in Iraq through the Rawa battle, with tens of thousands of local and foreign fighters either killed or remaining at large, many believe it will still pose a security threat in Iraq by maintaining dormant cells and staging lone wolf attacks.