BAGHDAD — Tarmiya, roughly 50 kilometers north of the Iraqi capital, has in recent weeks been the scene of suicide bombers killed prior to reaching their target and airstrikes amid the dense groves of date palms, fields and orchards.

Late on Jan. 18, two members of the local Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) were killed in the area. An operation conducted the morning afterward in collaboration with the Iraqi National Security Service killed three IS fighters in a nearby area, with many social media accounts calling it “revenge for the martyrs” and noting that the security forces had prayed at dawn and then began the operation.

Yehia Rasoul, a spokesman for the Iraqi armed forces commander-in-chief, noted on Twitter that the IS fighters killed were “the commander of the so-called northern Karkh division of the Wilayat of Baghdad, Khalil Ibrahim Fayyad al-Jubouri, and his terrorist assistant nicknamed Saqr, alongside one of their companions nicknamed Abu Qais.”

The Tigris River marks the dividing line between the two administrative districts of Baghdad: the western side of Karkh and the eastern side, Rusafa.