A suicide bomber has killed two Iraqi policemen near a former bastion of the Islamic State group, days after IS claimed a similar attack near Syria's border, a security official said Friday.

On Thursday morning a "suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest drove a booby-trapped car into a federal police checkpoint" near Hawija, north of Baghdad, one official said.

"Two policemen were killed and a third one wounded," in the attack, the official added.

Hawija is one of the last IS holdouts retaken by government troops a year ago and has long been a bastion of radical Sunni Muslim groups.

On Wednesday an IS suicide bomber blew a vehicle at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the Iraq border town of Al-Qaim, near the Syrian frontier, another of the last towns in Iraq to be recaptured from IS.

Also on Thursday, three members of Iraq's Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force, which played a key role in fighting IS, were wounded in a blast near Hawija, another security official said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Thursday's attacks but IS said it was behind Wednesday's suicide bombing.

In a purported new audio message released last week, IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called on his followers to "not give up the jihad against their enemy".

According to Hisham al-Hashemi, an expert on radical Islamist groups, about 2,000 IS jihadists are still active in Iraq, which declared victory over the jihadists in December last year.

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Car bomb kills 11 in west Iraq after IS chief jihad call
Ramadi, Iraq (AFP) Aug 29, 2018
A suicide bomber killed at least 11 people in Iraq on Wednesday in an attack that underscored the threat still posed by the Islamic State group despite a string of defeats. The assailant blew up a vehicle at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Al-Qaim, one of the last towns in Iraq to be recaptured from IS, near the Syrian border. Five members of the security forces were among 11 people killed in the blast, which also wounded 16 other people, mostly civilians, police Captain Mahmud Jassem told AFP. ... read more