Deadly attack targets Iraqi troops

Assailants targeting Iraqi military barracks protecting an oil pipeline in the country’s north killed 15 soldiers, officials said Tuesday. The attack was the latest blow to the Iraqi government’s efforts to achieve stability in the fractured and increasingly volatile country.

According to two police officers, an unknown number of gunmen staged the nighttime assault on the barracks in Ayn al-Jahish village outside the northern city of Mosul on Monday. Eight soldiers were beheaded during the attack while seven others were killed by gunfire, a medical official said.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media.

The troops were charged with protecting a pipeline that sends Iraqi crude oil to international markets. Attacks on pipelines are common in the area near Mosul, a former insurgent stronghold located about 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.

The brazen attack comes amid a surge in violence to levels unseen in Iraq since 2008. Government figures show that more than 1,000 people were killed last month alone.

The violence has posed a serious challenge to the Shia-led government’s efforts to achieve stability, and has fueled fears that, with elections due in April, the country is on the brink of civil war. Violence has spiked since last April, when security forces cracked down on a Sunni protest camp north of Baghdad in clashes that left 45 dead.

No group has claimed responsibility for most of the bloodshed in recent months, but Sunni armed groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), often target Iraq's security forces and have been blamed by Baghdad for many of the deaths.

According to the U.N., sectarian violence killed 8,868 people in Iraq last year.

Wire services