Kurdish forces free 15 oil workers seized earlier by IS

The Kurdish security forces, known as Peshmerga, freed 15 workers seized by the Islamic State (IS) militants at an oil facility near the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, security source said on Sunday.

"The 15 workers, who are affiliated to the Iraqi North Oil Company, were found held at a cellar at the sprawling facility after the Peshmerga defeated the IS militants," Major General Rasoul Qader, a Peshmerga leader in Kirkuk, told reporters without giving further details.

The capture of the workers occurred on Friday when the IS militants attacked the oil facility of Khubbaz, some 25 km southwest of Kirkuk, which itself located about 250 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

The Kurdish troops are still clearing the roads and buildings of Khubbaz oil facility from dozens of bombs planted by the IS militants in buildings and vehicles before they withdrew from the facility earlier by the Peshmerga, the source said.

In a separate incident, a Peshmerga member was killed and three others were injured on Sunday when a booby-trapped hummer truck left at the oil facility detonated near a passing Peshmerga patrol, a Peshmerga source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Separately, two roadside bombs went off near a Shiite militia convoy in Taji area, some 15 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, leaving a militiaman killed and 15 others injured, a local police source anonymously told Xinhua.

The security situation in Iraq began to drastically deteriorate on June 10, 2014, when bloody clashes broke out between the Iraqi security forces and the IS group who took control of the country's northern province of Nineveh and later seized swathes of territories after Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts in other predominantly Sunni provinces. Endit