Baghdad: Militants downed an Iraqi army helicopter on Thursday and killed nearly a dozen security forces in overnight clashes in what appeared to be an al-Qaeda surge to retake one of its former strongholds in Iraq.
The fighting around the town of Hadid, about 10 kilometres north of the Diyala provincial capital of Baqouba, was in its third and deadliest day.
It comes on the heels of a warning last weekend by al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq to push back into areas it was forced out of by the US military. That threat was followed by a wave of violence that killed 115 people in the country’s deadliest day in more than two years — an assault for which al-Qaeda claimed responsibility.
Diyala provincial spokesman Salih Ebressim Khalil said militants targeted the Iraqi army helicopter forcing it to make an emergency landing. Overnight clashes left 19 federal policemen dead, Khalil said.
Diyala is a predominantly Sunni province and has a large Shiite population.
Its remote rural areas have served as a safe haven for insurgents, and posed a major challenge to Iraqi security forces. (AP)