BAGHDAD, March 14 (Xinhua) -- A total of four Hashd Shaabi members were killed on Saturday in two attacks by Islamic State (IS) militants in the Iraqi province of Salahudin, a provincial police source said.
In one of the attacks, the extremist IS militants attacked an outpost manned by Saraya al-Salam militia, affiliated with Hashd Shaabi, in Zour al-Tharthar area in the south of the city of Samarra, some 120 km north of the capital Baghdad, Mohammed al-Bazi told Xinhua.
The attack sparked fierce clashes between the two sides and resulted in the killing of three paramilitary members and the wounding of another, al-Bazi said.
Saraya al-Salam, or Peace Companies, is a revival of the Mahdi Army militia that was created by the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
In a separate incident, an IS sniper shot dead an Hashd Shaabi member at a checkpoint in al-Zargah area in the east of the provincial capital Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, according to al-Bazi.
The security situation in Iraq has dramatically improved since Iraqi security forces fully defeated the IS militants across the country late in 2017.
However, IS remnants have since melted in urban areas or resorted to deserts and rugged areas, carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians.
