BEIRUT _ Two U.S. service members were killed in Iraq in an engagement with enemy forces on Sunday, the Pentagon said on Monday.
The two soldiers, whose names have not been released pending next of kin notification, were killed in a firefight with Islamic State militants in the northern Iraqi district of Makhmur. They were there to accompany and advise Iraqi security forces.
On Monday, Iraq's elite Counter-Terrorism Service announced it had conducted a raid a day earlier on an Islamic State encampment in the Qarachogh mountain range, some 37 miles southwest of the city of Irbil.
The clashes involving U.S. troops and Iraqi forces took place in a cave complex. Twenty-five Islamic State militants were killed and nine tunnels and a training camp were destroyed.
The death of the U.S. soldiers comes amid tensions between Iraq and the U.S. over American troops' presence in the country after a January strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the top Iranian commander.
Suleimani's assassination was seen by many politicians as a gross violation of Iraq's sovereignty and sparked renewed calls for the U.S. to leave the country. Joint anti-Islamic State operations between Iraqi security forces and the coalition were suspended for a time. Col. Myles Caggins, spokesman for the coalition in Iraq, said joint missions between Iraqi and U.S. forces had restarted mid-February.
Sunday's operation began around 7 a.m., when warplanes struck areas of the Qarachogh mountains, according to witnesses quoted by Rudaw, an Iraqi Kurdish news channel. Four helicopter gunships pressed the attack on three different sites in the mountains, before soldiers rappelled from the helicopters.
Iraq's anti-terror force said the firefight ended early Monday morning.
Islamic State, whose militants once controlled a full third of both Syria and Iraq, lost the last of its putative caliphate last year. Since then, its members have found refuge in remote areas of both countries, including the Qarachogh mountains.
