“Acting on intelligence information, troops of the Iraqi Military Intelligence Directorate caught two Islamic State terrorists in al-Qassem and June First districts in Kirkuk,” Iraqi TV channel Alsumaria TV quoted the directorate as saying in a press release as reported by Iraqi News.

“The pair were tasked with equipping hotbeds of the Islamic State terrorist group on the outskirts of Kirkuk,” the statement read.

Iraq declared the collapse of Islamic State’s territorial influence in November 2017 with the recapture of Rawa, a city on Anbar’s western borders with Syria, which was the group’s last bastion in Iraq, reported Iraqi News.

In 2014, the Islamic State had declared a self-styled “caliphate” in a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria.