In an armed attack targeting their village north of Baghdad, eight civilians were killed in Iraq, while local officials condemned this attack, which they described as "terrorist".

The attack, which has not yet been confirmed, took place in the village of Albu Bali in the AL-Khalis District of Diyala province.

The head of the judiciary, Uday al-khodran, said in a statement to the official Iraqi news agency, that "a group of terrorists riding motorcycles attacked the village of Albu Bali, which is located on the outskirts of Al-Khalis district from three axes," and Al-khodran added: "The Village is one of the agricultural villages ... It is inhabited by farmers... Dozens of residents rushed to confront the terrorist attack, some of whom were unarmed," he said, adding that the attack, which lasted for half an hour, killed 8 people and injured 3 others.

Residents of the village had formed an armed group to defend themselves against ISIS after its rise in 2014, an interior ministry official, who preferred to remain anonymous, told AFP, attributing this latest attack to the jihadists.

The Ministry of Defense announced the dispatch of a high-level delegation to Diyala, "to find out the details of the recent criminal incident there". The attack comes the day after an ambush claimed by ISIS killed nine members of the Iraqi federal police in Kirkuk.

In 2014, ISIS took control of large areas in Iraq and neighboring Syria, but was defeated in the two countries respectively in 2017 and 2019. While Iraq declared "victory" over ISIS in 2017, the group's elements are still active in rural and remote areas of the country.

The Iraqi security forces are constantly waging operations against these cells, and from time to time announce the killing of dozens of jihadists by air strikes or ground raids. The border between Syria and Iraq is still "a major area of weakness" exploited by the organization, which has "between 6 thousand and 10 thousand fighters spread throughout the two countries, most of them concentrated in rural areas, and it is estimated that most of them are Syrian and Iraqi citizens," according to a UN Security Council report published in July 2022.

Speaking about the attack that targeted the Federal Police, prime minister Mohammed Shiaa al-Sudani said in a speech on Monday night: "there are mistakes made by the security services. There is a clear malfunction that led to this incident, there must be accountability,"he said.