An Iraqi brigadier is killed in Diyala three weeks after the last Americans leave

US forces completed their withdrawal from Iraq on 30 September, ending the military mission in the country, Reuters reported. Six days later, Islamic State claimed an attack on a federal police regiment southwest of Kirkuk, near Hawija and about 70km from the city, in which one policeman was killed and four wounded by machine gun and sniper fire, according to two security sources who spoke to Reuters. It was the first reported ISIS assault on Iraqi security forces since the withdrawal was completed. Iraq’s Security Media Cell said on 13 October that Iraqi forces had conducted airstrikes on Islamic State targets west of Kirkuk. On 14 October the Ministry of Defence announced that Brigadier General Ahat Yasser Khudair Hussein, commander of the 11th Infantry Division’s communications directorate, had been killed in a bombing blamed on an ISIS remnant, alongside Warrant Officer Mutaz Shahid Abbas; a third soldier later died of wounds. The air force struck in Diyala the same day.

The sequence is drawn together by Seth Frantzman for the Long War Journal, published by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies — a think tank with a declared policy orientation on Iraq and Iran, and the only outlet tying the 13–14 October strikes and the commander’s death into one account. It notes that the airstrikes and the killing came as al-Zaidi met US Special Presidential Envoy Tom Barrack on 13 October, and that on 10 October the parliamentarian Mazen Gharib, a member of the Security and Defence Committee, warned of Islamic State activity in northern Iraq following the American departure. The benchmark Baghdad set for itself is specific: then-prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani argued in September 2025 that ISIS had “lost its ability to plan, operate, control territory, or threaten security,” citing four attacks in 2025 against 42 in 2024.

Assessment: Three incidents in ten days do not reconstitute an insurgency, and the Hawija–Kirkuk–Diyala triangle has produced rural ambushes continuously since 2017. What has changed is who absorbs them politically. The 4-versus-42 figure was the argument for ending the coalition mission; it now belongs to whoever has to explain the next funeral. Expect the number to be contested rather than refuted — Baghdad counts claimed attacks, its critics count incidents. Note also the carrier: the fullest narrative of the past week comes from an organisation that opposed the withdrawal, which does not make the deaths less real but does shape which strikes get counted.