KIRKUK — Thirteen Iraqi policemen were killed in an Daesh (so-called ISIS) group attack against a checkpoint in the country's north early Sunday, security and medical sources said.

The overnight attack on a guard post near the city of Kirkuk also left four people wounded, police sources said on Sunday.

The attack, to the south of the city, took place just after midnight, a senior Iraqi police officer said. Militants regularly target the Iraqi army and police in the area, but this attack was one of the ISIS group's most deadly this year.

Police sources said the attackers clashed for two hours with police stationed at a village in the town of Rashad, southwest of northern city of Kirkuk.

Militants used roadside bombs to prevent police reinforcements from reaching the post, destroying three police vehicles, police sources said.

"Thirteen were killed and four wounded" among the security forces, a police officer added. A medical source based in Kirkuk confirmed the toll. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

ISIS seized swaths of Iraq in a lightning offensive in 2014, before being beaten back by a counter-insurgency campaign supported by a US-led military coalition.

The Iraqi government declared the Sunni extremists defeated in late 2017, but they retain sleeper cells that continue to hit security forces with asymmetric attacks.

A July 19 bombing claimed by ISIS officially killed 30 people in the Al-Woheilat market in Sadr City, a Shiite suburb of Baghdad. International coalition troops in Iraq currently number around 3,500, of which 2,500 are US troops.

Last Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron visited Iraqi Kurdistan and expressed concern about an ISIS "resurgence" in both Iraq and Syria.

He also said that French soldiers deployed in Iraq as part of the international coalition will remain in the country "no matter what choices the Americans make".

On Monday, the Secretariat General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has condemned the terrorist attack that targeted a site affiliated to the Iraqi security forces in Iraq's Kirkuk Governorate, which resulted in the death and injury of a number of security forces personnel.

OIC Secretary General Dr. Yousef Bin Ahmed Al-Othaimeen expressed his sincere condolences and sympathy to the families of the victims of the heinous terrorist act and to the government of the Republic of Iraq, wishing the injured a speedy recovery.

The Secretariat General reaffirmed the OIC’s firm position that condemns all forms of terrorism. It also stressed the need to support Iraq’s efforts in combating terrorism and violent extremism. — Agencies