A senior Iraqi army officer and seven others were killed overnight when Islamic State militants attacked a military headquarters near Haditha, a military commander said on Tuesday.
Haditha and its nearby dam, which the command is charged with protecting, are in one of the few parts of the Sunni Muslim province of Anbar still under the control of Iraq's Shia-led government forces and local police backed by tribal fighters. The area is about 190 km northwest of Baghdad.
Brigadier Ali Abboud, the command's chief of staff, was killed when four suicide bombers attacked an entrance to the base and clashed with soldiers, said Major General Ali Daboun, the commander of Jazeera and Badiya operations in charge of the western desert bordering Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
"Four terrorists attacked the entrance to the command headquarters and our soldiers managed to kill them. Regrettably Brigadier Ali Abboud was martyred in the attacks," Daboun said by phone.
Seven other police and army personnel were killed, including a second army officer, two police sources said.
Initial investigations showed the militants managed to reach the base by dressing in army uniforms, security officials said.
The last major attack on Haditha in January by about 200 Islamic State militants was repelled with the help of US-led coalition air strikes. A coalition spokesman said that offensive was in response to the group's losses in the provincial capital of Ramadi, which Iraqi forces recaptured in December.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a string of attacks in recent days in and around Baghdad and in the eastern province of Diyala which have killed more than 100 people.
