ISIS News: Militant Group's Attack Leads to Fighting in, Around Northern Iraqi City of Kirkuk

On Friday, the Islamist terror group ISIS launched a major assault on Kirkuk, the New York Daily News reported.

The organization, which calls itself the "Islamic State" and controls large swaths of land in Syria and Iraq, is apparently renewing its efforts to take the city 147 miles north of Baghdad.

The oil-rich Kirkuk is a highly prized target because of its strategic, as well as symbolic, significance. ISIS failed to take the city during its invasion of Iraq last summer and this time apparently attacked from the south, the newspaper detailed.

Kurdish Peshmerga troops met the Islamist attackers in several harsh battles on multiple fronts surrounding the city, the New York Daily News said; ISIS fighters were able to seize Maktab Khalid, an area about 12 miles southwest of Kirkuk.

In central Kirkuk, meanwhile, heavily armed militants attacked an abandoned hotel that local police had used as their headquarters, CNN noted. Peshmerga and anti-terror units later raided the building, killing three fighters in the effort. Two suicide bombers detonated themselves in an attempt to push the Kurdish forces out, the news channel detailed.

ISIS published photos purporting to show its control of parts of south and southwest Kirkuk; burning tents that had been used by Peshmerga troops could be seen in the pictures. The militants apparently killed Brig. Gen. Shirko Fateh, the highest-ranking operational commander of Kirkuk's Peshmerga brigade.

The United Nations withdrew its foreign staff from the city because of the security situation, Eliana Nabaa, a spokeswoman for the U.N. mission in Iraq, told the New York Times. Employees were sent to Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, and also given the choice to relocate.

Friday's ISIS attack demonstrated that the airstrikes the United States and its allies have lodged against the terror group have not removed its ability to harass Iraqi cities, the newspaper judged. The terror organization has also successfully fended off an offensive from Peshmerga fighters around Mosul, CNN added.

Elsewhere in Iraq, ISIS fighters attacked positions held by the Iraqi Army and allied militias, killing six people north of Baghdad, the New York Times said. In the eastern city of Jalawla, meanwhile, a suicide bomber killed seven Kurdish fighters.