BAGHDAD // An ISIL suicide bomber killed two Iraqi army generals on Thursday as they led forces against the extremist group in Anbar province – a key battleground against ISIL.
The bomber drove his explosives-rigged vehicle into the advancing troops north of Anbar’s provincial capital, Ramadi, killing the two generals and three soldiers, military officials said.
The attack killed Maj Gen Abdul Rahman Abu Regheef, deputy chief of operations in Anbar, and Brig Gen Sefeen Abdul Maguid, commander of the 10th Army Division. Ten soldiers were wounded.
ISIL captured Ramadi earlier this year and also controls the nearby city of Fallujah.
Government forces and allied Sunni and Shiite militiamen have been battling ISIL militants in Anbar for months but have only made modest gains against the group in the vast province that stretches west of Baghdad.
Speaking on state television, military spokesman Brig Gen Yahya Al Zobeidi sought to play down the psychological effect of the loss of the two generals.
“We will not stop our operations and we will continue to advance,” he said.
The extremist group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement online, but gave a different account of how it unfolded, saying it was carried out by four suicide bombers and two supporting gunmen who targeted the main command headquarters north of Ramadi.
It said all six of the extremists were killed.
The Iraqi Joint Operations Command confirmed the deaths of the two officers along with an unspecified number of other “heroic martyrs”.
The death or injury of senior Iraqi officers during battles against ISIL is a persistent problem for the country.
Two heads of the Anbar operations command have been wounded this year, while the commanders of a division and a brigade were killed in Anbar in April. The province’s governor was wounded in 2014.
Senior army and police commanders have also been killed in other Iraqi provinces since ISIL launched its offensive in June 2014, sweeping security forces aside.
ISIL controls about a third of Iraq and Syria. A US-led coalition has been staging air strikes against ISIL positions in Iraq and Syria over the past year.
Government forces and allied militiamen are coming under mounting pressure from ISIL militants in the oil refinery town of Beiji, north of Baghdad.
The Iraqi government retook Beiji late last year from ISIL, but the militants are on the offensive there again and now control about half of the town and the refinery.
Iraq’s prime minister Haider Al Abadi said this week that winning the ongoing battle over Beiji is key to defeating ISIL in Iraq.
* Agence France-Presse and Associated Press