An intelligence officer was killed and three soldiers injured in a bomb explosion in Iraq’s northern province of Kirkuk, an Iraqi army source said.

Lieutenant Colonel Laith al-Hayali of the Iraqi Army’s 8th Division Intelligence Service was killed and three soldiers injured on Wednesday when an explosive device detonated near their vehicle while moving in a village near the town of Dibis, northwest of the namesake provincial capital, Kirkuk, nearly 250 km north of Baghdad, an army officer told Xinhua news agency on condition of anonymity.

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Iraqi security forces rushed to the scene and evacuated the victims to Kirkuk General Hospital, the source said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far, Xinhua news agency reported.

Sporadic attacks still haunt Iraq despite an improvement in the security situation after the defeat of the extremist militants of the Islamic State (IS) group across the country in 2017.

IS fighters still carry out sporadic attacks in Kirkuk province, even after the extremists were defeated in Iraq in 2017 and two years later in Syria.

IS had swept over the neighbouring countries in 2014 and set up a “caliphate” in which they brutally imposed their extreme interpretation of Islamic law.

Since losing its last redoubts in Iraq and in Syria, the group has been reduced to small bands of guerillas operating in remote areas but no longer controlling any territory.

Iraqi security forces insist they are now capable of tackling IS remnants unassisted, as the group poses no significant threat.

At the end of August, a joint operation by US and Iraqi forces killed 15 IS group fighters in Iraq’s western desert, with seven US troops wounded in the operation, US Central Command said at the time.

A UN report released in July found the group’s combined strength in Iraq and Syria had fallen to between 1,500 and 3,000 fighters as a result of “battlefield losses, desertions, and recruitment challenges”.

In Iraq, its “activities remain largely contained but the group remains capable of sporadic, impactful attacks,” the UN report found.