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MOSUL, Iraq, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi security forces on Saturday repelled a suicide attack by the Islamic State (IS) militants near the town of Qayyara, south of Iraq's last major IS stronghold of Mosul, a security source said.
The attack occurred in the morning when dozens of IS militants with three suicide truck bombs attacked the positions of the security forces in west of Qayyara, some 55 km south of Mosul, Brigadier Firas Sabri, the spokesman of the Operations Command of Nineveh Liberation told Xinhua.
The security forces troops, backed by U.S.-led coalition aircraft, destroyed two suicide truck bombs and captured the third after its suicide bomber fled the scene, Sabri said.
The extremist militants withdrew from the battlefield, with at least six of them killed in front of the military positions, Sabri said without giving further details about casualties among the security forces.
Meanwhile, IS militants fired many mortar rounds on several neighborhoods of the town of Qayyara, leaving three civilians killed and four others wounded, according to Salih al-Jubouri, the mayor of Qayyara.
On Aug. 25, Iraqi security forces freed Qayyara, a strategic town supposed to be used as a staging ground for a major offensive to liberate the last major IS stronghold in Mosul, some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.
Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, has been under IS control since June 2014, when Iraqi government forces abandoned their weapons and fled, enabling IS militants to take control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions.
