Islamic State militants struck at Kurdish forces in the northern province of Kirkuk on Friday (January 30).
Police said Islamic State launched mortars and attacked positions of Kurdish fighters in four districts southwest of Kirkuk city.
Militants later detonated a car bomb at a disused hotel in Kirkuk city centre and clashed with peshmerga forces.
Kurdish forces later found the body of a militant in the hotel and threw the body over a balcony down to the street.
Islamic State has frequently battled Iraqi security forces and Shi’ite militias further south and west, but attacks in and around Kurdish-controlled Kirkuk have been less frequent.
Oil rose above $49 a barrel on Friday because of the violence in the oil-rich region.
An officer told Reuters news agency they had recaptured one district but that clashes were ongoing in the other three.
Heavily armed suicide bombers reportedly tried to take up positions in a hotel, but were killed by security forces.
More than 70 were reportedly wounded in the clashes.
At least seven other Kurdish fighters were killed by a suicide bomb at a checkpoint near the eastern town of Jalawla, 160 km (100 miles) southeast of Kirkuk, peshmerga and medical sources said.
More than 800 peshmerga have been killed in combat since Islamic State overran their defences in northern Iraq last summer, prompting U.S.-led air strikes.
The Kurds have now regained most of the ground they lost. But commanders complain they remain ill-equipped compared with the militants.
Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani told Reuters in an interview on Thursday (January 29) that the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State was inadequate.
Reuters
